Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
redundancy. Shannon's model is especially relevant for developing gene sequencing devices and
evaluation techniques.
Returning to the timeline of innovation and discovery in the converging fields of molecular biology
and computer science, Watson and Crick's elucidation of the structure of DNA in the early 1950s was
paralleled by the development of the transistor, the commercial computer, and the first stored
computer program. Around the same time, the computer science community switched, en masse,
from analog to digital computers for simulating missile trajectories, fuel consumption, and a variety
of other real-world analog situations. This virtually overnight shift from analog to digital computing is
attributed to the development of applied numerical integration, a basic simulation method used to
evaluate the time response of differential equations. Prior to the development of numerical
integration, simulating analog phenomena on digital computers was impractical.
The 1950s were also the time of the first breakthrough in the computer science field of artificial
intelligence (AI), as marked by the development of the General Problem Solver (GPS) program. GPS
was unique in that, unlike previous programs, its responses mimicked human behavior. Parallel
developments in molecular biology include the discovery of the process of spontaneous mutation and
the existence of transposons—the small, mobile DNA sequences that can replicate and insert copies
at random sites within chromosomes.
The early 1970s saw the development of the relational database, objectoriented programming, and
logic programming, which led in turn to the development of deductive databases in the late 1970s
and of object-oriented databases in the mid-1980s. These developments were timely for molecular
biology in that by the late 1970s, it became apparent that there would soon be unmanageable
quantities of DNA sequence data. The potential flood of data, together with rapidly evolving database
technologies entering the market, empowered researchers in the U.S. and Europe to establish
international DNA data banks in the early 1980s. GenBank, developed at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory, and the EMBL database, developed at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, were
both started in 1982. The third member of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database
Collaboration, the DNA Data Bank of Japan (or DDBJ), joined the group in 1982.
Continuing with the comparison of parallel development in computer science and molecular biology,
consider that shortly after the electronic spreadsheet (VisiCalc) was introduced into the general
computing market in the late 1970s, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent on a
genetically engineered form of bacteria designed to decompose oil from accidental spills. These two
events are significant milestones for computing and molecular biology in that they legitimized both
fields from the perspective of providing economically viable products that had demonstrable value to
the public.
The electronic spreadsheet is important in computing because it transformed the personal computer
from a toy for hobbyists and computer game enthusiasts to a serious business tool for anyone in
business. Not only could an accountant keep track of the business topics with automatic tabulation
and error checking performed by electronic spreadsheet, but the electronic spreadsheet transformed
the personal computer into a research tool statisticians could use for modeling everything from
neural networks and other machinelearning techniques, to performing what-if analyses on population
dynamics in the social sciences. Similarly, the first patent for a genetically engineered life form,
issued in 1980, served to legitimize genetic engineering as an activity that could be protected as
intellectual property. While detractors complained that turning over control of the genome and
molecular biology methods to companies and academic institutions provided them with too much
control over what amounts to everyone's genetic heritage, the patent opened the door to private
investments and other sources of support for R&D.
Other developments in the 1980s included significant advances in the languishing field of AI, thanks
to massive investment from the U.S. Government in an attempt to decode Russian text in real time.
In addition, by 1985, the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) method of amplifying DNA sequences—a
cornerstone for molecular biology research—was in use.
The next major event in computing, the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1990, roughly
coincided with the kickoff of the Human Genome Project. These two events are significant in that
