The Alpha Road

The Science of Life

Month: February, 2012

February 21, 2012

The God Complex

“A god complex is an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility. A person with a god complex may refuse to admit the possibility of error or failure, even in the face of complex or intractable problems or difficult or impossible tasks, or may regard personal opinions as unquestionably correct.[1][2] The individual may disregard the rules of society and require special consideration or privileges.[1]”

Source: Wikipedia

The first time that I heard about this was on a TED talk several months ago. The idea seemed to have slipped away from my memory, till suddenly I realized its factuality all over the place. Well, I have met and talked with quite a few scientists, and a good part of them are leaders in their respective fields. Many showed this “quality”.

The question is – is the god complex a necessary attribute of a scientist or is it just another symptom of an inborn human weakness that must be consciously and accordingly limited ?

No need?

I am one of those people who really do not like to have ideas imposed on them. The stature of the scientist trying to do so is not important to me, and the notion that all scientists are noble and honest is something I have parted away with a long time ago. And what agitates me even more are attempts by many older scientists to take advantage of the lack of experience (read knowledge) in the younger generation and try to impose their own understanding and bias on them, effectively recruiting new members for their cause.

Of course, every single one of us believes that he or she is inherently right and that the others are wrong. This is an unavoidable, yet useful property of the human psyche that has undoubtedly helped us achieve progress as a species owing to the increased power of the individual. I can understand where the older scientists are coming from. They believe that what they do is of great importance (many have dedicated years of their lives to this and denial is not an uncommon occurrence either) and they must do whatever they can to contribute. And definitely one of the best ways to do so is to plant seeds into a new field, the minds of the new generation that will shape the future.

Still, isn’t it better to leave the young to figure out things on our own? By providing the different points of view we are most likely to get closer to uncovering the true nature of things.

This is one of those topics that are not black and white, and I would certainly appreciate the opinions of my readers on this.

 

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February 11, 2012

The Importance of Contextual Data

Since microbes look basically the same (some might argue that there is a multitude of different shapes that microbes can adopt, but even if there were 200 of those, this would not help us in any significant way to quantify the millions of different species that are out there), microbiologists have to rely on other methods to identify, characterize and quantify the small critters. Let’s not forget that those critters are also responsible for the majority of the biomass on earth, half of the oxygen that we breath and there are around 2 kg of them in every single one of us.

So how do you characterize something that basically looks and behaves the same? Well, you rely on molecular biology tools. It is surprising for most people to realize that the difference between humans and other mammals in terms of DNA is just several percent (also there is virtually no difference between different human races, which makes me frown when thinking how many wars and genocides were waged based on this supposed difference. Ignorance is the root of all evil indeed.). Nevertheless these tiny differences are exactly what makes the successful accomplishment of this task feasible.

The central dogma of biology is that DNA is first transcribed into RNA and then translated to protein. In order for life to function in a proper way the main participants in these three steps are highly conserved (“preserved” or “protected” from mutations) during evolution. In other means, they have been basically the same in primary structure for millions of years and are the same for humans and bacteria.

The Central Dogma of Biology

One such conserved essential element is ribosomal RNA – the main constituent of the ribosomes, the machinery responsible for translation of mRNA into protein (now you realize why they must be conserved). The ribosomal RNA has a complex secondary structure (where the sequence of the basic building blocks, the nucleotides, adopts a more complex three dimensional shape) and this itself has its own more conserved and more variable regions. Since we want to see some, albeit tiny, differences between species we analyze these changing sections – the 16S rRNA (the “S” stands for the sedimentation coefficient, which comes from the technique used to isolate this part of the rRNA from cells).

To be more precise, what we actually sequence (read: obtain the basic nucleotide sequence, the primary structure) is the gene for the rRNA (the DNA sequence that encodes for 16S rRNA). How the sequencing works is a topic for another post. Read the rest of this entry »

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