4 ms·

yeah, but the programmer will believe the chart. the biologist, who knows better, will regard the chart as “our current best attempt at documentation, subject

yeah, but the programmer will believe the chart. the biologist, who knows better, will regard the chart as “our current best attempt at documentation, subject to change at any time at all” My background is biomedical. This or a very similar chart was used in the last week of lectures on control systems as a lesson in humility. It was meant to demonstrate both how complex things can be — and then, when the professor recolored the lines on a section according to the confidence in their correctness as a function of recent research, how uncertain our knowledge of that complexity really is. He had a backup slide where an entirely new graph, with almost no topological similarity to the metabolic one, was created for a few of the nodes that participate in other nonmetabolic pathways.

jostmey 5y ago
Agree with you 100%. This chart is just barely scratching the surface
Kim_Bruning 5y ago
It's a pretty cool field!
cameronh90 5y ago
"the programmer will believe the chart." I see you've not done much legacy software maintenance.. ;)
grishka 5y ago
> yeah, but the programmer will believe the chart. I'm a programmer and I do understand that these maps are "as much as we currently know" and the "we currently know" is expanding rapidly. I like to see biology as reverse engineering alien technology made by a much more advanced civilization. Of course that's not true — it all evolved over billions of years — but the resemblance is totally there. The one thing that really strikes me about biology is how young of a science it actually is and how much progress we've made in so little time. It was only 1953 when the structure and function of DNA was discovered. In terms of history, it's not even yesterday. Yet now, 68 years later, we're literally injecting people with correctly encoded instructions to make a harmless part of a deadly virus to save their lives. This kinda blows my mind.
- hprotagonist 5y ago
  >I like to see biology as reverse engineering alien technology made by a much more advanced civilization. Of course that's not true — it all evolved over billions of years — but the resemblance is totally there. Be really careful here, though, otherwise you'll hoodwink yourself. The two famous things that come to mind for me are these, both of which remind me to tread carefully: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2007/11/06/andy_grove_rich_famous_smart_and_wrong https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2007/11/06/an... https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD936.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/E...
dekhn 5y ago
most of the edges in this graph were elucidated using radiocarbon tracking, and they are generally well-established. I don't think there have been major corrections to the Calvin cycle in 50 years. Ditto for the glycolysis cycle- at best, people find alternative paths and excursions, but they're not on-path for core biology. These metabolic charts, like the results of spectroscopy, actually represent some of the best, highest quality scientific reference data that exists.

jostmey 5y ago

Agree with you 100%. This chart is just barely scratching the surface

Kim_Bruning 5y ago

It's a pretty cool field!

cameronh90 5y ago

"the programmer will believe the chart." I see you've not done much legacy software maintenance.. ;)

grishka 5y ago

> yeah, but the programmer will believe the chart. I'm a programmer and I do understand that these maps are "as much as we currently know" and the "we currently know" is expanding rapidly. I like to see biology as reverse engineering alien technology made by a much more advanced civilization. Of course that's not true — it all evolved over billions of years — but the resemblance is totally there. The one thing that really strikes me about biology is how young of a science it actually is and how much progress we've made in so little time. It was only 1953 when the structure and function of DNA was discovered. In terms of history, it's not even yesterday. Yet now, 68 years later, we're literally injecting people with correctly encoded instructions to make a harmless part of a deadly virus to save their lives. This kinda blows my mind.

hprotagonist 5y ago
>I like to see biology as reverse engineering alien technology made by a much more advanced civilization. Of course that's not true — it all evolved over billions of years — but the resemblance is totally there. Be really careful here, though, otherwise you'll hoodwink yourself. The two famous things that come to mind for me are these, both of which remind me to tread carefully: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2007/11/06/andy_grove_rich_famous_smart_and_wrong https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2007/11/06/an... https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD936.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/E...

dekhn 5y ago

most of the edges in this graph were elucidated using radiocarbon tracking, and they are generally well-established. I don't think there have been major corrections to the Calvin cycle in 50 years. Ditto for the glycolysis cycle- at best, people find alternative paths and excursions, but they're not on-path for core biology. These metabolic charts, like the results of spectroscopy, actually represent some of the best, highest quality scientific reference data that exists.