In general, how does biology benefit from the Computer Age?
An iShoe collects enough data every minute to overload the hard drive on my first computer. Whether you’re studying human physiology or the mouse genome, 21st-century computation gives us the agility to handle huge data sets and to capture at least a fraction of the complexity that makes humans go. Computers help us think about messy systems, and biology is a very messy system. For instance, there are about 100,000 different antibodies in a milliliter of blood. Each of those is designed to recognize a different molecule that could cause disease so that your body can eliminate the threat; that’s 100,000 magical cures! Now think about the bits: Just the genetic sequence defining these antibodies is a couple of hundred megabytes worth of data. Without modern computers, understanding the immune system would be hopeless.
