Researchers Produce First Complete Computer Model of an Orgasm
Posted on 07/21/2012 9:27:35 AM PDT by onedoug
In a breakthrough effort for computational biology, the world's first complete computer model of an organism has been completed, Stanford researchers reported last week in the journal Cell.
A team led by Markus Covert, assistant professor of bioengineering, used data from more than 900 scientific papers to account for every molecular interaction that takes place in the life cycle of Mycoplasma genitalium, the world's smallest free-living bacterium.
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(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Fascinating study though....
I hope this works better than the Climate Models built to show how Gaia works.
Don’t worry, as soon as they try to manufacture bacteria they’ll want to improve on it... obviously leading to the creation of super-bacteria that will consume all living things on Earth, even itself.
It was nice knowing you.
;)
I thought it said orgasm. Like the orgasmatron.
Researchers Produce First Complete Computer Model of an Orgasm
LOL that’s actually the way I read the title of the thread.
Somehow I doubt they’ve COMPLETELY simulated this organism. If so, this would be revolutionary and would be worth of a Nobel prize. Also if true, then it would be possible to build an actual working organism from scratch, which of course isn’t going to happen.
As with most of these popular-press reports, massive exaggeration is the order of the day.
Nonetheless, let me remind you that it has taken the entire accumulated knowledge of the human race to get even this far to understand the simplest of organic machines, an organic machine that is claimed to have formed accidentally by the actions of cosmic rays bombarding mineralized water for a relatively short period of time.
Do you think they 'mapped' the organism. In other words, a very general map?
LOL! I thought the same thing.
It’s hard to say what they actually did without reading the paper itself, but I can assure you that they did not simulate every molecule in that organism.
The knowledge for doing that is insufficient by at least a thousand orders of magnitude not to mention that the necessary computing power is a million orders of magnitude lacking. For instance, look at something as relatively simple as protein folding; given any specific gene sequence for a functional protein, science is still unable to predict what it’s folded 3-D structure will be.
And besides, one is getting close to quantum-level behavior in dealing with massively complex molecular machines, in which case total predictability is impossible anyway. The best that could be done might be a statistical simulation in that case. But that’s a long ways off too.
I agree. I remember reading about how years of computation were required just to simulate a single protein.
Considering the organism named Mycoplasma Genitalium, that thought does not seem particularly errant.
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I also agree. They are coming close now to mapping the entire human genome.
But ALL of those researchers will tell you there are vast stretches in the genetic code where we are not sure if it codes for something, or does nothing, or is simply remnant dna.
While human DNA is vastly more complex than a bacterial genome, I suspect the same is true for bacterial DNA, there are still parts we are not sure exactly if or what it does.
Lots of people posting in the religion forum will get it understand...
The orders of magnitude for this specific organism may have been substantially reduced. Time will tell and it may take many iterations to tell.
But...... there is a major change in the way things will be looked at
It has been mapped. It’s just that a whole bunch of it is not understood as to what it does . It’s apparently much more than mere genes doing individual acts.
The horrible truth is that once you got one to orgaz with you descend into horrible ring of fire, dependency, enforced by the Courts, leading to much trouble in the world.
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