CodeCon '05: SciTools

SciTools had a very, very cool demo. Not sure what extracting DNA from chick-peas with common household materials actually had to do with the presentation, of which I understood very little, but still.

Take-away:

- Molecular biologists and geneticists face the same issues as hackers when talking about the uses to which their work could be put. Breast cancer detection and Anthrax - almost all mentioned in the same breath concerning the same tech.
- Another issue they face is that they don't want to deal with the GATCC stuff any more. That's low-level assembly thinking. As far as I understand, nature already has it's own HLL's, but I'm not entirely straight on that point.
- Cool sparklines and vast databases of stuff is online, e.g. LocusLink and OMIM.
- The human genome fits in 250 meg of RAM.
- Quote: "Biologists don't index from 0".