07.05.09
Bioinfomatics
Ever sat there writing some code, thinking that it’s all right work but hardly contributing to the benefit of mankind. Well, maybe you have made a difference, in an indirect way.
Aside from the SOAP, Web services and SQL databases and visualisation software that goes into large collaborative science projects such as the human genome or CERN. Increasingly - down at the DNA level - perl scripts and python are used to filter and join data.
Good old algorithms such as Levenshtein distance (and subsequent variations) are useful in DNA/RNA sequences as well as
There’s something comforting in knowing that the bug you fixed or raised against Perl/Python/etc is being used in all manner of projects.
Here is the uncut Dawkin’s interview with Craig Venter regarding his IT capability. It’s quite long, but the details are a lot more interesting that what was broadcast on Channel 4.
Venter is an interesting character. While serving in ‘Nam, he attempted suicide by swimming into the sea, changing his mind a mile out while being attacked by sharks and jellyfish.
Now he’s taking buckets of sea water and ’shotgun’ sequencing the microscopic life to add to the ever growing database of RNAs<->proteins sequences.
One of Venter’s projects is to ‘boot’ up a brand new life form but inserting a man made genome into a bacteria shell, and perhaps a little further off to solve the world’s energy crisis by engineering a bacteria which eats CO2 and shits out octane.