From: xgl (xli03@emory.edu)
Date: Sun Dec 17 2000 - 10:29:55 MST
On Sun, 17 Dec 2000, Emlyn wrote:
> I asked if it was the same thing, because I thought that protein folding
> work in particular was driven by a desire to be able to determine what
> protein, or maybe I should say nano machine, would be created by a
> particular gene sequence. This in turn so that we can know what effect
> changes to the genome will have.
>
> Isn't this so that we can work out what we want to construct, genetically,
> and then go ahead and do it? I guess that does have other applications than
> building non-biological nanotech. What are the primary motivators for this
> line of research, then?
>
not just effects of changes to the genome. i think it would help
us more easily figure out the structure of existing proteins (not
everything can be mapped by x-ray crystalography), and design drugs
molecule by molecule, and simulate their actions.
> Another question... Blue gene, etc, are being built to enable us to get to
> the point where we can code up a gene sequence, then find out what it will
> produce. This may be a dumb question, but don't we want to go the other way?
> Don't we really want to decide what shaped proteins we need, and then run a
> reverse simulation to come up with a sequence which would produce this?
>
drexler wrote a pnas paper on precisely this back in the 80's
-x
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