Really interesting article. By the end, they admit that what makes Delta worse is the sum of the parts, and not just a single mutation in the spike protein.
This is a general property of biology: it's almost always the sum of the parts.
It reminds me the trajectory of computer sciences, where a lot of our (conventional) systems are carefully coordinated part orchestras. I.e., an engineer knows all the classes/functions/modules and how they interact. Compare with our recent multi-layer neural networks, where nobody can say what the coefficient at index [22, 2, 432, 91, 42] does exactly. I wonder if, similarly, bio-research will be able to move more towards automatic discovery of desirable systems.
》I wonder if, similarly, bio-research will be able to move more towards automatic discovery of desirable systems.
Bio research already does that, SARS-CoV-2 was created this way. It uses natural selection over multiple generations to select desired behaviour, the same way as neural networks are created. This process is automated to large extend.
This is a general property of biology: it's almost always the sum of the parts.
It reminds me the trajectory of computer sciences, where a lot of our (conventional) systems are carefully coordinated part orchestras. I.e., an engineer knows all the classes/functions/modules and how they interact. Compare with our recent multi-layer neural networks, where nobody can say what the coefficient at index [22, 2, 432, 91, 42] does exactly. I wonder if, similarly, bio-research will be able to move more towards automatic discovery of desirable systems.