A case study on BioInformatics
Since the dawn of modern science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the activities of scientific and social importance given to them are rampant. What is noticeable, however, is that until very recently it was possible to observe a large gap between the sciences. The math was the math problems. The physical problems was about the structure and origin of the universe. The chemistry on the intrinsic properties of molecules, and biology was the key problems of the so-called living organisms. These major sciences began to prosecute and seek knowledge starting from different points on the observation of nature and expand their knowledge of science to normal limits conceivable within the paradigmatic force, becoming quite traditional areas of scientific research modern.
However, it seems that during the twentieth century, the basic sciences have expanded until slamming into a wall conceptual paradigm that has proven increasingly resistant to being destroyed. Thus, noting the difficulties in going forward in the advancement of specific knowledge intra-disciplinary - and given the small proportion of Einsteins among the human population - the sciences began to walk sideways, producing intermediate sciences such as physical chemistry, biophysics and biochemistry. Thus, scientific knowledge since the last decades of the twentieth century continues to advance, but this time surpassing the arbitrary boundaries that define specific knowledge as the target of scrutiny from either basic discipline of human knowledge. This has allowed interdisciplinary, so that researchers adherents of a particular scientific school start to address the issues originally booked another discipline. And it seems enrich the search for knowledge to allow scientists to cross educated differently apply their knowledge of empirical data does not usually analyzed according to a certain point of view (paradigm).
Thomas Kuhn seems to have been next to Karl Popper, one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century. According to Kuhn every scientific discipline teaches his disciples in order to make them understand and learn to apply a particular set of ideas and methodologies that the traditional survey area. The education paradigm is part of the curricula of degree courses in various disciplines. Argument here about the benefits of interaction between scientists from different fields to build a broader knowledge and robust. The multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary researchers who have contributed to-educated in many different ways to use his arsenal of methodological and research data d'other disciplines. The evaluation of such data so the second new methodologies and points of views (paradigms) although they appear to result in abnormal findings at first, may later be re-interpreted and re-integrated into the body of knowledge of the disciplines, promoting better integration of theory to allow the explanation of new empirical data.
Science education is still held by the production of manuals and Kuhnian paradigms chains for each targeted area of \u200b\u200bscientific studies. In addition, researchers stationed in other areas of research - such as mathematics, statistical and computing - have also spent dealing with general issues prepared by the Natural Sciences. So scientists " indoctrinated" in a particular area of \u200b\u200bknowledge have increasingly dealt with issues related to different areas. And, in addressing these problems " other," the researchers see the area of \u200b\u200ba course, according to the paradigms of science itself, which in itself allows a different approach and understanding of them. This way that the academic standard of discipline may seem absurd, nonsensical, unreasonable or flawed. This is what happens often when molecular biologists interpret data from DNA sequences analyzed by researchers in the sciences.
Case Study
To illustrate this observation, I must talk a little about the process of evolution of genes. It seems to me that any biologist catechized second Darwinian paradigm knows that new genes arise through changes in ancestral genes, which are copied from parent to offspring and that it can accumulate mutations over time and with the passage of generations. The study of evolution of genes is not done, so when analyzing a single gene, but to look at the history the evolution of a gene in several cell lines vertical (parent-child) of organisms. In general, however, mathematicians and statisticians have no precise knowledge about the subject and have no clear idea of \u200b\u200bwhat a gene or how it arises or evolve through mutations in DNA sequences occur throughout the generations. Nevertheless, these theorists are well aware how to approach certain generic problems on its own paradigmatic principles.
In a paper presented at the Institute of Biological Sciences, UFMG, a researcher in bioinformatics production in the sciences tried create a model to explain the chance of the presence of a specific nitrogenous base [1] in a certain position within a gene. "Which would be," she wondered, "the chance of a gene have a base 'A' in its tenth nucleotide position since the previous nine bases were, for example, ATGCCCTGT?" Generalizing the problem: what is the chance a base position of a gene X is A, C, G or T, as the previous bases were determined precisely?
However, a molecular evolutionary biologist would say that to know this chance, the researcher should know the ancestral gene that gave rise to that as well as the rate of substitution between nitrogen bases and the time passed since the new gene diverged from the ancestor. The way the biologist looks at the problem is on time, not into that molecule per se. Calculating the odds said, would arrive at a probabilistic forecast of the presence of each base at that position in particular - but always looking at other sequences from other individuals who would be the same strain of the individual analyzed.
But the researcher was trained in mathematics and saw the nitrogenous bases simply as consecutive letters of an alphabet - and absolutely did not take into account the fact that this sequence should be derived from an ancestral duplication of the sequence. Thus, the researcher used a statistical-mathematical device known as Markov chains "to try to solve the problem. In her research, she analyzed several genes and tried to get real transition rules between states that would lead it to know what would be the most posterior, given certain nitrogenous bases earlier (see figure). But their study was only longitudinal done only in a straight and disregarded the whole evolution of DNA sequences that originated there.
a biologist's view of this researcher was committing blasphemy and biological evolution to consider: (I) that the arrangement of bases in a DNA strand was an event given by consecutiveness, where the base should depend on the following bases precedents within the same sequence, and (ii) that the probability of a base did not depend on possible occurring mutations of that gene since the separation from his ancestor, but a chance linked to provision of bases that were closer to the beginning of that gene in particular.
Emergence of new genes second theory proposed by researchers in sciences and the biological paradigm force.
not However, their results showed certain regularities evident: they showed that in certain particular sets of genes could predict with high accuracy what the next basis of a gene, when considering their previous 20 bases, something that at first might have seemed a anomaly to the theory of Darwinian evolution. Thus, studying the genes that had this consistency, the researcher realized that they had in common that they belong to the same gene family.
It is common to classify genes within a family when they have a common gene ancestor recent . And like "know" biologists that evolution occurs through mutations in ancestral genes, one would assume that the composition of nitrogenous bases within representatives of the same gene family present an order of bases within a certain pattern, a pattern that was re-discovered by this researcher the exact area that had never directed his research to the way in which new genes evolve from an ancestor. So, what this researcher produced could now be described by biologists as a new technique for the discovery of gene families and was able to be incorporated seamlessly to the theory of evolution and has allowed a better articulation it. Thus, although the survey results show unexpected patterns in the eyes of a biologist, and though she herself could not properly explain the motivation for their observations, reinterpretations of regularities described it allows its findings and conclusions to be safely applied to the area of \u200b\u200bbiology . No biologist would have thought to do studies like these since he knows that evolution operates vertically across the generations and not laterally within the same organism. However the observation of a pattern conserved for this gene has enabled a new technique for defining gene families were found and could be used later by the discipline of molecular evolution.
Conclusions
fit problems of the natural sciences second conceptual models and alternative approaches to solving problems of different areas of knowledge, multidisciplinarity, in a Kuhnian point of view, must have a key role both in the description of anomalies as in better articulation of theories along the paradigmatic century.
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[1] DNA is a polymer composed of nucleotide huge interconnected. The nucleotides are DNA monomers of the polymer. There are four different nucleotides, formed by a radical phosphate, a sugar (deoxyribose) and a nitrogenous base, differentiate between them by the qualities of those bases. Bases whose chemical structure is in a double ring are adenine and guanine, thymine and cytosine as are single ring bases. According to the current paradigm, the DNA is an informational code formed by sets of A, G, C and T whose order of these bases produce information for survival and reproduction of organisms. The order of bases generates information in a manner similar to which the order of letters in Portuguese also produces information DNA is seen as an informational code chemical formed by discrete entities (the letters A, G, C and T).
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