Who Will Solve Spooky Actions in Biology?

Biology is becoming more and more inter-disciplinary and quantitative in nature. Studies aimed to find out the role of protein X and Y in the biologic process Z was the kind of problems that dominated biomedical research in the 1980’s and 90’s.  But everyone was aware that such studies were far from being complete. It was analogous to blind-men describing elephant by touching its different body parts. Each molecule in a cell functions in collaboration with many other molecules. Many times the effect of a gene product will be on another tissues located at a different end of the body through endocrine system (For e.g. Prolactin produced in a part of brain called anterior pituitary exerts it main physiological function in breast of pregnant woman). In a way it is similar to the butterfly effect in Chaos theory, i.e. an apparently insignificant perturbation (such as flapping the wings of a butterfly) can result in much amplified final outcome (such as hurricane) in a different part of the world. Everyone appreciate the fact that to understand the biology of a molecule we should understand its impact at systemic level.

Studying the system is not a simple task. Generating, analyzing and interpreting the data become very complex. That obviously necessitates application of programming and computing. That is a different topic, but what made me think in this line now is a conversation I had with my PI recently. We were discussing the transcriptional regulation in response to specific signaling programs. How does different part of genome interact to elicit a precise transcriptional output? A change in one part of the genome result in a molecular event in a region situated at a far away part of genome. How does that happen? Are these interactions are predetermined or random?  At least we know that some of them are very specific. From where does this specificity come from? All the information is written in the primary sequence of DNA. How does DNA behave under certain physical constrain should be same as how a string with similar tensile strength and composition would behave in similar environment. If so, can we predict the bending and interaction of different part of genome using computer simulation? When you try to model the bending pattern of a string in response to different variables it would transform to a physics problem. Apparently, when neuroscientists tried to solve the neural circuitry they had to seek help from astronomers since that data structure could be deconvoluted using algorithm designed for studies in astrophysics. Which freaking biologist would know about it unless s/he kept an open eye for developments happening in other venues of science? In fact I think the nuclear space in a cell is a universe in itself. How do different molecular events are coordinated to bring out a precise cellular state at a given moment? How does a molecular event going on in one part of the genome causes a ‘spooky action' at a distant end? The answer, for sure, is not going to be solved by traditional molecular biologists.