Posted on 03/15/2005 2:41:19 PM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo
The Future of Biology: Reverse Engineering 03/14/2005 Just as an engineer can model the feedback controls required in an autopilot system for an aircraft, the biologist can construct models of cellular networks to try to understand how they work. “The hallmark of a good feedback control design is a resulting closed loop system that is stable and robust to modeling errors and parameter variation in the plant”, [i.e., the system], “and achieves a desired output value quickly without unduly large actuation signals at the plant input,” explain Claire J. Tomlin and Jeffrey D. Axelrod of Stanford in a Commentary in PNAS.1 (Emphasis added in all quotes.) But are the analytical principles of reverse engineering relevant to biological systems? Yes, they continue: “Some insightful recent papers advocate a similar modular decomposition of biological systems according to the well defined functional parts used in engineering and, specifically, engineering control theory.”
One example they focus on is the bacterial heat shock response recently modeled by El-Samad et al.2 (see 01/26/2005 entry). These commentators seem quite amazed at the technology of this biological system: In a recent issue of PNAS, El-Samad et al. showed that the mechanism used in Escherichia coli to combat heat shock is just what a well trained control engineer would design, given the signals and the functions available.
This is no simple trick. “The challenge to the cell is that the task is gargantuan,” they exclaim. Thousands of protein parts – up to a quarter of the cell’s protein inventory – must be generated rapidly in times of heat stress. But like an army with nothing to do, a large heat-shock response force is too expensive to maintain all the time. Instead, the rescuers are drafted into action when needed by an elaborate system of sensors, feedback and feed-forward loops, and protein networks.
Living cells defend themselves from a vast array of environmental insults. One such environmental stress is exposure to temperatures significantly above the range in which an organism normally lives. Heat unfolds proteins by introducing thermal energy that is sufficient to overcome the noncovalent molecular interactions that maintain their tertiary structures. Evidently, this threat has been ubiquitous throughout the evolution [sic] of most life forms. Organisms respond with a highly conserved response that involves the induced expression of heat shock proteins. These proteins include molecular chaperones that ordinarily help to fold newly synthesized proteins and in this context help to refold denatured proteins. They also include proteases [enzymes that disassemble damaged proteins] and, in eukaryotes, a proteolytic multiprotein complex called the proteasome, which serve to degrade denatured proteins that are otherwise harmful or even lethal to the cell. Sufficient production of chaperones and proteases can rescue the cell from death by repairing or ridding the cell of damaged proteins.
The interesting thing about this Commentary, however, is not just the bacterial system, amazing as it is. It’s the way the scientists approached the system to understand it. “Viewing the heat shock response as a control engineer would,” they continue, El-Samad et al. treated it like a robust system and reverse-engineered it into a mathematical model, then ran simulations to see if it reacted like the biological system. They found that two feedback loops were finely tuned to each other to provide robustness against single-parameter fluctuations. By altering the parameters in their model, they could detect influences on the response time and the number of proteins generated. This approach gave them a handle on what was going on in the cell. The analysis in El-Samad et al. is important not just because it captures the behavior of the system, but because it decomposes the mechanism into intuitively comprehensible parts. If the heat shock mechanism can be described and understood in terms of engineering control principles, it will surely be informative to apply these principles to a broad array of cellular regulatory mechanisms and thereby reveal the control architecture under which they operate.
With the flood of data hitting molecular biologists in the post-genomic era, they explain, this reverse-engineering approach is much more promising than identifying the function of each protein part, because: ...the physiologically relevant functions of the majority of proteins encoded in most genomes are either poorly understood or not understood at all. One can imagine that, by combining these data with measurements of response profiles, it may be possible to deduce the presence of modular control features, such as feedforward or feedback paths, and the kind of control function that the system uses. It may even be possible to examine the response characteristics of a given system, for example, a rapid and sustained output, as seen here, or an oscillation, and to draw inferences about the conditions under which a mechanism is built to function. This, in turn, could help in deducing what other signals are participating in the system behavior.
The commentators clearly see this example as a positive step forward toward the ultimate goal, “to predict, from the response characteristics, the overall function of the biological network.” They hope other biologists will follow the lead of El-Samad et al. Such reverse engineering may be “the most effective means” of modeling unknown cellular systems, they end: “Certainly, these kinds of analyses promise to raise the bar for understanding biological processes.”
1Tomlin and Axelrod, “Understanding biology by reverse engineering the control,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 10.1073/pnas.0500276102, published online before print March 14, 2005.
2El-Samad, Kurata, Doyle, Gross and Khammash, “Surviving heat shock: Control strategies for robustness and performance,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 10.1073/pnas.0403510102, published online before print January 24, 2005. Reader, please understand the significance of this commentary. Not only did El-Samad et al. demonstrate that the design approach works, but these commentators praised it as the best way to understand biology (notice their title). That implies all of biology, not just the heat shock response in bacteria, would be better served with the design approach. This is a powerful affirmation of intelligent design theory from scientists outside the I.D. camp.
Sure, they referred to evolution a couple of times, but the statements were incidental and worthless. Reverse engineering needs Darwinism like teenagers need a pack of cigarettes. Evolutionary theory contributes nothing to this approach; it is just a habit, full of poison and hot air. Design theory breaks out of the habit and provides a fresh new beginning. These commentators started their piece with a long paragraph about how engineers design models of aircraft autopilot systems; then they drew clear, unambiguous parallels to biological systems. If we need to become design engineers to understand biology, then attributing the origin of the systems to chance, undirected processes is foolish. Darwinistas, your revolution has failed. Get out of the way, or get with the program. We don’t need your tall tales and unworkable utopian dreams any more. The future of biology belongs to the engineers who appreciate good design when they see it.
It’s amazing to ponder that a cell is programmed to deal with heat shock better than a well-trained civil defense system can deal with a regional heat wave. How does a cell, without eyes and brains, manage to recruit thousands of highly-specialized workers to help their brethren in need? (Did you notice some of the rescuers are called chaperones? Evidently, the same nurses who bring newborn proteins into the world also know how to treat heat stroke.) And to think this is just one of many such systems working simultaneously in the cell to respond to a host of contingencies is truly staggering.
Notice also how the commentators described the heat shock response system as “just what a well trained control engineer would design.” Wonder Who that could be? Tinkerbell? Not with her method of designing (see 03/11/2005 commentary). No matter; leaders in the I.D. movement emphasize that it is not necessary to identify the Designer to detect design. But they also teach that good science requires following the evidence wherever it leads.
Note that we "hear" it now, albeit faintly.
Heh, if you've read Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy-
(Babel fish part)
Thus in a poof of logic, God was no more.
That said: yes, if you didn't hear the warning or otherwise have reason to recognize that the nice policeman was ordering you to stop, then you should be acquitted (assuming that your failure to stop would have been subject to a criminal charge in the first place). If the circumstances were really obvious, the case might not even get to a jury; a judge could easily toss it out on summary judgment.
More realistically, for example, if a policeman orally Mirandizes [insert joke here] a deaf arrestee, there's a Fifth Amendment problem.
I. Am. Leaving. Now. 'Bye!
Depends on the laws in your state. Are you allowed to drive, even if you can't hear a siren? I suppose so; that's why they also have a flashing light. I don't ever remember being given a hearing test in my state. In fact, my license was recently renewed, and all they wanted was a vision test. So if they let you drive, then it's up to the police to use hand gestures, as they usually do. If your state is like mine, I'd acquit you.
I'm aware of gamut and such, as applied to printing and color displays, but this description completely fails to explore the concept of color itself. What you have here is an engineer's guide to presenting color images. It predicts the subjective perception of color for the relatively limited cases where the medium is a printer or rgb display.
I do not deny that there are objective ways to engineer color displays, but this hardly addresses the definition of color. You can make all the arbitrary definitions you want, and say that green objectively exists as a spectral band, but in the end, color is an activity of the eye and brain. and that activity can be evoked by an arbitrary set of inputs and causes, some of which have nothing to do with light.
So unless you are going to say color, the concept, is equivalent to wavelength, you have no basis for saying it exists outside the perception. If color equals wavelength, then the concept of color is superfluous, except in common speech. It adds nothing but confusion to a technical discussion.
You are BEHIND. Please read the remainder of the posts if you're going to provide humor and/or input.
You claiming that any premise noted in the first 200 posts is faulty has shown that you have not read (by fact of not debating them) the arguements places since.
They were also close friends at Princeton.
Having read some other comments I finally have the courage to ask this queston.
Does "green" exist if you are entirely blind?
Wow! This thread is really rolling. I wish I had more time to read through the comments, but I am buried here at the office. Hope you are enjoying the discussion.
FRegards,
MM
Ohmygod, for the last time:
READ THE REST OF THE POSTS!
This is part of an ongoing discussion involving underlying theories and questions. Popping your input into this specific question while ignoring the rest does not validate your standpoint.
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