Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
structed networks, structures, hierarchies, and sets of movements that
keep it mobile.
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The production of biological data entails a particular kind of work-
ing and a particular kind of knowing. Central to this point is the idea
that bioinformatics requires standardization—a kind of fl attening of
the biological object—in order to function. Moving objects around in
virtual space means making them computable, networkable, and so on.
Nucleotide sequences have become such standardizable, computable,
networkable objects. Making bioinformatics, then, has had much to do
with constructing sequences in this way—as just such standard objects.
The reducibility of sequence to data, to objects that can fl ow through
the computer, has played a major role in establishing its importance and
ubiquity in contemporary biological work. Sequence permits precisely
the kind of abstraction or stripping down that is required for samples
to be transformed into data. Bioinformatics has emerged “out of se-
quence” because it is sequence that has made it possible to move biology
around virtual space.
