4 ms·
Sorry. Let me clarify. For simplicity's sake, consider this hypothetical: You spend 1 terawatt hour of energy powering a datacenter to come up with a novel pro
by mlsu 3y ago
Sorry. Let me clarify. For simplicity's sake, consider this hypothetical:
You spend 1 terawatt hour of energy powering a datacenter to come up with a novel protein for a drug by simulating protein interactions.
Your competitor studies an already existing fungus, which may have expended that amount of energy over the combined lifetime of all of its ancestors to arrive at the same design, and gets the novel protein "for free."
One of you had to pay the energy cost, and the other didn't. The fungus is "free" and when it is destroyed, "it" -- that energy expenditure -- is lost forever.
It's not a ridiculous hypothetical because many such things (medicines, food, etc) come from living beings. Some from very obscure living beings. And some that are impossible to buy at any price, like living things that pollinate food, regulate the soil, stuff like that. Thermodynamically it doesn't matter if humanity goes extinct but I think we can do a little better than that!
- leptons 3y agoThe existence of any proteins in any fungus is not an automatic solution for anything - even more energy has to be expended to find it, purify it, test it, and notice any benefit for anything. There are likely a billion such proteins in nature right now that will never be discovered as useful for anything. Targeted research is likely a shorter and less expensive route to "finding" breakthrough medicines, especially since technology evolves exponentially.