A Periodic Table for Biology
Imparting order to biological data requires a biological way of thinking
By John S. Torday

>From the beginning of written history, humans have gathered information and
imparted order, starting with Denis Diderot's Encyclopedia, to Carl
Linnaeus' binomial nomenclature for the classification of animals and
plants, to today's numerous genome annotations. Several physicists in the
19th century had attempted to order the known elements. Notably, Dmitri
Mendeleev published his periodic table and law in 1869. Its most stunning
feature: Holes within its hierarchical structure predict the existence and
properties of additional elements--the ultimate validation of scientific
theory and thought.

Like the chemical elements, human genome data behooves biologists to
systematize information and view it through a new lens. In the current
environment, this is being done using statistical analyses of
high-throughput genomic data, which assumes that the genes are expressed as
a result of random occurrences. But as Albert Einstein said, "God does not
play dice with the universe." The gene pools of contemporary species have
evolved not by chance, but through the process of natural selection.
Therefore, we should be thinking about how to exploit this process in order
to discern gene-selection patterns based on function, that is, through
functional and comparative genomics.

Read the rest at The Scientist
http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2004/jun/research3_040621.html

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