Whats the role of computation in piecing together the components of biological systems?
Biological systems, such as a cell with cancer genes, have more interacting parts than the mind can grasp on its own. Computation allows us to put them all together. If you go to the store and buy milk and orange juice, you don’t need a calculator to know the total cost. But if you want to buy 22 items, adding the numbers is a lot easier with a calculator. Computation also helps you analyze different choices. If you want to splurge on something but stay in your budget, then you have to make certain choices, like buy store brands. In both these ways, computation enables us to go through large systems in a pretty fast way to generate hypotheses of how those systems might work and how we can predict [their] behavior. What has your research revealed about molecular and cellular systems? Our studies have shown how connecting many chemical reactions together produces cellular memory. A neuron may remember a certain stimulus or an immune cell may remember a foreign object and secrete an antib
