Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
tions, [and] laboratory techniques.”
30
They hoped that MOLGEN, once
provided with suffi cient information, would be able to emulate the rea-
soning processes of a working molecular biologist. Biologists did not
readily take up these AI tools, and their use remained limited. What
did begin to catch on, however, were the simple tools created as part
of the MOLGEN project for entering, editing, comparing, and analyz-
ing protein and nucleic acid sequences. In other words, biologists used
MOLGEN for data management, rather than for the more complex
tasks for which it was intended.
By the end of the 1970s, computers had not yet exerted a wide infl u-
ence on the knowledge and practice of biology. Since about 1975, how-
ever, computers have changed what it means to do biology: they have
“computerized” the biologist's laboratory. By the early 1980s, and espe-
cially after the advent of the fi rst personal computers, biologists began
to use computers in a variety of ways. These applications included the
collection, display, and analysis of data (e.g., electron micrographs, gel
electrophoresis), simulations of molecular dynamics (e.g., binding of en-
zymes), simulations of evolution, and especially the study of the struc-
ture and folding of proteins (reconstructing data from X-ray crystallog-
raphy, visualization, simulation and prediction of folding).
31
However,
biologists saw the greatest potential of computers in dealing with se-
quences. In 1984, for instance, Martin Bishop wrote a review of software
for molecular biology; out of fi fty-three packages listed, thirty were for
sequence analysis, a further nine for “recombinant DNA strategy,” and
another seven for database retrieval and management.
32
The analysis of
sequence data was becoming the exemplar for computing in biology.
33
As data processing machines, computers could be used in biology
only in ways that aligned with their uses in the military and in physics.
The early design and use of computers infl uenced the ways in which
they could and would be applied in the life sciences. In the 1970s, the
computer began to bring new kinds of problems (and techniques for
solving them) to the fore in biology—simulation, statistics, and large-
volume data management and analysis were the problems computers
could solve quickly. We will see how these methods had to struggle to
establish themselves within and alongside more familiar ways of know-
ing and doing in the life sciences.
Walter Goad and the Origins of GenBank
The next two sections provide two examples of ultimately successful
attempts to introduce computers into biology. What these case studies
