Eek, a mouse genome this way cometh

Jack Vaughan's Radio Weblog :

Eek, a mouse genome this way cometh

The mouse has for some number of recent years been a metaphor for the man. In biology, that is. The differences between us, shown to be rare in the genome research as uncovered by teams in 2002, are still crucial and troublesome, in the sense that, as a possible example, we can improve pancreatic cancer results in clinical mice trials, and then fall flatly on our faces when we try the same drugs on humans.

But we share 99% of our genes with mice and, it seems, we will be comparing ourselves to mice for some time. Of course the metaphoric gene jumps we make have precursors – precursors for example in the early metaphorical jumps the Post-Restoration-era scientists made when they first saw the cells that hold the genes we are just looking into so deeply now.

Robert Hooke is charged as originator of the term ‘cell.’ He lived in England at the time of the American Revolution. The term in biology, and the beginnings of a whole new thrust of science, originates with the invention of the microscope. In fact, Hooke was instrumental in such things. As a youth he came soon to work on the experimental side of the sciences. He was employed by Thomas Boyle to build the air pump Boyle used for physical studies of air in relation to elasticity, sound and flame. In his role as the curator of experiments to the Royal Society of London, Hooke became intimately familiar with the latest work on both telescopes and microscopes.

In the early going Hooke used the microscope to look into the mystery of cork. Looking in at a gathering of corky matter, he saw it as a honey comb, or an assemblage of cells. The cells of monks came to his mind, it is said; thus, the cell. An artist might have looked at the same view, and came up with the same or different analogy. What’s the difference here? It would be artistic metaphor, only if the hall of time did not assign it a utility in further research. If thinking of a cell as a solo monk’s abode helps move science along, then it is scientific method.