[I sent this on May 6th, but it never seemed to appear, so
I'll try again....]
----
There is a thread going in this group, which I have been reading with
increasing incredulity, of the ilk that 'biologists hate modelling,
mainly because they can't do it, distrust anything that has to do
with maths, stats or computers, and don't believe the answers
anyway, and that if only it were otherwise life would be wonderful,
all problems solved (and maybe MCA would be seen as the most
wonderful innovation since sliced bread)'.
May I just remark that this type of view is such a gross
overgeneralisation that it is almost drivel. Just have a look at the
enormous and exciting literature on evolutionary biology and
ecology, nonlinear and chaotic dynamics etc.
One of my own favourite examples is DNA shuffling, now an incredibly
powerful tool in (mainly forced) molecular evolution. It was
invented by Stemmer, who showed in simulo that it was much more
effective in generating (bio)diversity than the usual single-site
mutations, before he then did the expts with real DNA.
[1] Stemmer, W. P. C. (1994). Rapid evolution of a protein in vivo by
DNA shuffling. Nature 370, 389-391. [2] Stemmer, W. P. C. (1994). DNA
shuffling by random fragmentation and reassembly: in vitro
recombination for molecular evolution. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 91,
10747-10751.
Hope this helps, and may get this group thinking more about
evolutionary problems (and what was that I heard about there being
no new concepts to be developed in biology...?)
Douglas.
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