At the crossroads of biology and computer science (appeared on L'Express, Mauritius, June 2011)

Should Charles Babbage, the creator of the first computer, and Louis Pasteur, a biology pioneer (who luckily for men found how to prevent beer from souring!), have met as contemporaries 150 years ago, there is not much they could have talked about – except maybe women, or the weather (Babbage was British after all). Not much to share in academics anyway, because their disciplines had very little in common. Biology was largely a collection of facts, with few unifying theories, so much so that Earnest Rutherford relegated it as “stamp collection”. On the other hand, computer science is based on mathematical abstractions, and engineered with physics (the only science worthy of the name, according to Rutherford). But these disciplines have come together in surprising ways. Let’s look at a few of them.

Bioinformatics

First, consider bioinformatics, or the use of computers to solve difficult biological problems. Data on human and other forms of life (including plants) are very complex and voluminous.  Imagine a polite alien visiting earth wishing to bring back all biological information about a typical human, without abducting anyone of us. And he runs out of space on his pen drive! His best bet is to create a code that captures every detail in our body from fundamental building blocks. Well, there is a code like this, called the DNA, and it is three billion long. It takes sophisticated techniques to analyze the encoded 20,000 genes, or two million proteins with complicated structures that fold in specific ways to make our body work the way it does. Bioinformatics can help find the gene that may cause cancer or Alzheimer, or help create the right drug that can neutralize key proteins in AIDS or Chikungunya viruses. Bioinformatics is also about finding the “tree of life”, or how various species are related to each other based on evolution, by comparing their DNA sequences (this recently led to the discovery that Dodo and Solitaire are close cousins in the family of pigeons).

Biology-inspired computing

Another synergy between computers and biology stems from following Mother Nature’s lead to develop useful computer applications, without necessarily replicating the biology exactly. For instance, “neural networks” are computer programs that mimic how the brain activates interconnected neurons to solve complex problems with many parameters; “genetic algorithms” are programs that simulate the cross-breeding of species where the genetically fittest survive, and this is used to develop the fittest solutions; or how “swarm intelligence” draws ideas from ant colonies or bacterial growth for decision-making in complex environments.

Biological computing

An emerging area where biology and computers are converging is biological computing (or DNA computing). This field is about creating computers using biological molecules like DNA or proteins (especially enzymes). The idea of using DNA fragments as traditional computer “bits” was first proposed by  Leonard Adelman in 1994. Recently, this field boasted a major achievement: a bio-computer that can calculate square roots, based on work by Erik Winfree and Lulu Qian (California Institute of Technology). This type of computing is not designed to rival your laptop, but rather it allows computation in biological contexts, perhaps even in the body. "We'd like to make chemical systems that can probe their molecular environments, process chemical signals, make decisions, and take actions at the chemical level", says Winfree. Some predict a future where tiny DNA computers in our bodies will monitor, diagnose, medicate and repair!

Computational neuroscience

Finally, biology meets computer technology in computational neuroscience, where the information processing capabilities of the brain are studied. The recent Human Brain Project proposes to create computer models to simulate brain functionalities as closely as possible. This will potentially revolutionize medical neuroscience, and also help develop new computing techniques derived from the brain architecture.

Interdisciplinary endeavors that bring together biology, computer science and engineering are deemed critical for progress in key areas, including food, environment, energy and health. Computer scientists and biologists indeed have plenty to talk about and learn from each other today, and it would be much more than comparing stamps.