Weiye Loh's Library tagged Gnome → View Popular, Search in Google

Aug

2011

Skepticblog » MS and the Promise of The Genome Project

By all accounts the HGP was a huge success. But 8 years after the completion of the first human genome map there is the vague sense in the public that the promise has not been fulfilled. The public was promised that the HGP would allow us to identify genes associated with diseases, and then craft cures based upon that knowledge. So where are all the genetic cures we were promised?

skepticblog.org/...-promise-of-the-genome-project

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Gnome Science Media Communication

What is really going on is that even a big-picture successful science project like the HGP can be overhyped by the press. By mapping the human genome scientists were given a powerful tool with which to investigate disease. It still takes, however, a tremendous amount of research to translate that tool into specific knowledge about an individual disease, and then further translate that specific knowledge into a proven treatment. The pipeline for translating the basic knowledge of the HGP into an actual treatment is about 15-20 years optimistically (and that is after a specific disease is pursued genetically.

Jan

2011

Researchers store data in bacteria - Channel NewsAsia

www.channelnewsasia.com/....html

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Data Gnome DNA Bacteria

Hong Kong researchers have leapt beyond this early step, developing methods to store more complex data and starting to overcome practical problems which have lent weight to sceptics who see the method as science fiction.

The group has developed a method of compressing data, splitting it into chunks and distributing it between different bacterial cells, which helps to overcome limits on storage capacity. They are also able to "map" the DNA so information can be easily located.

This opens up the way to storing not only text, but images, music, and even video within cells.
As a storage method it is extremely compact -- because each cell is minuscule, the group says that one gram of bacteria could store the same amount of information as 450 2,000 gigabyte hard disks.
4 more annotation(s)...
- The techniques they use -- removing DNA from bacterial cells, manipulating them using enzymes and returning them to a new cell -- are similar to those used to create genetically modified foods.
  
  But rather than changing the building blocks of an organism, the Hong Kong group allows extra information to piggyback on the DNA of the cell, after checking their changes against a master database to make sure they do not have accidental toxic effects.
  
  Their work could enable extra information to be added to a genetically modified crop in the form of a "bio barcode", Chan said.
- "For example, a company that makes a GM tomato that grows extra large with a gene that promotes growth -- on top of that we can actually encode additional information like safety protocols, things that are not directly related to the biological system."
  
  Other types of information, like copyright and design history, could help to monitor the spread of GM crops, he said.
- So is it possible that a home computer could one day consist of a dish filled with micro-organisms?
  
  The group dismisses concerns that this could be dangerous, pointing out that despite E.coli's poor reputation, they use an altered form that cannot exist outside a rich synthetic medium.
- However, Yim admitted that while the group's work is a "foundational advance", a petri dish PC is not likely to be on the market in the coming years, not least because the method of retrieving the data requires experts in a laboratory.

Sep

2010

Skepticblog » Kurzweil vs Myer on Brain Complexity

There is an interesting blog debate going on between PZ Myers and Ray Kurzweil about the complexity of the brain – a topic that I too blog about and so I thought I would offer my thoughts. The “debate” started with a talk by Kurzweil at the Singularity Summit, a press summary of which prompted this response from PZ Myers. Kurzweil then responded here, and Myers responded to his response here.

skepticblog.org/...il-vs-myer-on-brain-complexity

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Brain Gnome Mapping

Kurzweil is still claiming that we can infer something about how much complexity is in the brain from the genome. He writes:

The amount of information in the genome (after lossless compression, which is feasible because of the massive redundancy in the genome) is about 50 million bytes (down from 800 million bytes in the uncompressed genome). It is true that the information in the genome goes through a complex route to create a brain, but the information in the genome constrains the amount of information in the brain prior to the brain’s interaction with its environment.