Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [51]
Meanwhile the discussions got tougher and tougher.
“I don’t know what she could have been thinking with this one, it’s absurd!”
“Let me start by suggesting limited discussion.”
Frank began subtly to apply the brakes. He didn’t want them to think he was a bad panel manager.
Nevertheless, the attack mood gained momentum. Baboons descending on wounded prey; it was almost Pavlovian, a food-rewarded joy in destruction that did not bode well for the species. The pleasure taken in wrecking anything meticulous. Frank had seen it many times: a carpenter doing demolition with a sledgehammer, a vet who went duck-hunting on weekends…It was unfortunate, given their current overextended moment in planetary history, but nevertheless real. As a species they were therefore probably doomed. And so the only real adaptive strategy, for the individual, was to do one’s best to secure one’s own position. And sometimes that meant a little strategic defection.
Near the end of the day it was Thornton’s turn again. Finally they had come to the proposal from Yann Pierzinski. People were getting tired.
Frank said, “Okay, almost done here. Let’s finish them off, shall we? Two more to go. Stu, we’re to you again, on ‘Mathematical and Algorithmic Analysis of Palindromic Codons as Predictors of a Gene’s Protein Expression.’ Mandel and Pierzinski, Caltech.”
Thornton shook his head wearily. “I see it’s got a couple of ‘Very Goods’ from people, but I give it a ‘Fair.’ It’s a nice thought, but it seems to be promising too much. I mean, predicting the proteome from the genome would be enough in itself, but then understanding how the genome evolved, building error-tolerant biocomputers—it’s like a list of the big unsolved problems.”
Francesca Taolini asked him what he thought of the algorithm that the proposal hoped to develop.
“It’s too sketchy to be sure! That’s really what he’s hoping to find, as far as I can tell. There would be a final toolbox with a software environment and language, then a gene grammar to make sense of palindromes in particular, he seems to think those are important, but I think they’re just redundancy and repair sequences, that’s why the palindromic structure. They’re like the reinforcement at the bottom of a zipper. To think that he could use this to predict all the proteins that a particular gene would produce!”
“But if you could, you would see what proteins you would get without needing to do microassays and use crystallography to see what came up,” Francesca pointed out. “That would be very useful. I thought the line he was following had potential, myself. I know people working on something like this, and it would be good to have more people on it, it’s a broad front. That’s why I gave it a ‘Very Good,’ and I’d still recommend we fund it.” She kept her eyes on her screen.
“Well yeah,” Thornton said crossly, “but where would he get the biosensors that would tell him if he was right or not? There’s no controls.”
“That would be someone else’s problem. If the predictions were turning out good you wouldn’t have to test all of them, that would be the point.”
Frank waited a beat. “Anyone else?” he said in a neutral tone.
Pritchard and Yao Lee joined in. Lee obviously thought it was a good idea, in theory. He started describing it as a kind of cookbook with evolving recipes, and Frank ventured to say, “How would that work?”
“Well, by successive iterations of the operation, you know. It would be to get you started, suggest directions to try.”
“Look,” Francesca interjected, “eventually we’re going to have to tackle this issue, because until we do, the mechanics of gene expression are just a black box. It’s a very valid line of inquiry.”
“Habib?” Frank asked.
“It would be nice, I guess, if he could make it work. It’s not so easy.