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Evolving new drugs – fragment-based lead discovery for all
The search for new drugs with desirable properties has been likened by Robin Spencer (as cited) to the process of holing a golf ball from a great distance, in which several strokes (using different...
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In praise of theory
“Actually, the orgy of fact extraction in which everybody is currently engaged has, like most consumer economies, accumulated a vast debt. This is a debt of theory and some of us are soon going to have...
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If pigs had wings; what we know and what we don’t know about swine flu and...
One would have to be very removed from access to the media not to be aware of the 2009 outbreak of swine flu (influenza). Although it presently appears that this outbreak is barely (if at all) more...
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Of directed evolution and downturns
In the previous blog, I wrote about directed evolution for the discovery of variants of proteins with desirable properties (and that this is a multiobjective combinatorial optimisation problem). The...
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Large-scale directed evolution of microbial pathways for biotechnology
Most genes individually contribute little to complex phenotypes (although small subsets often can when mutated in the right combinations), which is why the traditional methods of strain improvement –...
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Technology development as an evolutionary process
In my blogs of last week and the week before, I discussed the use of evolutionary methods for improving biotechnological processes. I have also blogged, more than once, about the concept of the economy...
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Beauty, truth and computation – Scifoo 2010
Last week I attended the annual Science Foo camp (twitter hashtag #scifoo) ‘unconference’, held at the Googleplex outside San Francisco. Just as last year, topics were determined by attendees offering...
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Institutes, systems and evolution
We usually think of evolution in terms of biological organisms, but systems and organisations are also subject to evolutionary change, based at least in part on natural selection. This is not a novel...
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Gargoyles, gender and Gedanken experiments
The last week of my holiday included a first visit to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where we enjoyed a wide variety of gigs, including the well-received Oxford Gargoyles, performances of A Clockwork...
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