X-Message-Number: 12954
From: "George Smith" <>
References: <>
Subject: Please help me out here.
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 1999 12:00:12 -0800

Just a few weeks ago as I recall (I haven't checked the Cryonet archives) I
remember reading someone writing that superior computing power just couldn't
touch the enormous problem of protein folding, indicating that insofar as
cryonics was concerned this was a critical issue!

As I recall we were discussing the application of nanotechnology to
resuscitation of a cryonics patient and I was being told that there were an
incredible number of possible ways the larger protein molecules could be
deformed and thus I was dreaming if I believed that this problem could be
solved through nanotechnology devices.  The implication, as I recall, was
that even if we developed nano-sized robots to manipulate molecules in
accordance with reading and following the patient's DNA, the protein folding
problem was astronomically out of our reach to understand.

Of course, now it is world news that IBM disagrees and has committed $100
million to building the Blue Gene computer to solve just this problem.

Then yesterday Thomas Donaldson writes that it isn't directly important
(message 12947), which confuses the heck out me:

> Will it help us with our desire to be suspended? Not directly. But it
> can certainly be useful for other things, and these in turn may be
> useful even to us.

Okay.  Help me out here.

It seems to me that having the required computing power to enable three
dimensional protein folding simulations will directly aid us in
nanotechnology development (as John Clark first suggested when posting the
initial IBM Blue Gene story here, and others have elaborated on since then)
as well as enable us to restore damaged proteins in patients' bodies using
the nanotechnology so developed.  IBM directly mentioned how their Blue Gene
project would dovetail with the projected completion of the Human Genome
Project in five years.  For heaven's sake, didn't IBM name the thing Blue
GENE for a reason?

It sounds to me as if Blue Gene can directly help us in the steps required
to build of nano tools needed to do the job AND Blue Gene can directly help
us in mapping out how to do the job itself, at least in part.

How much more direct can it get?

I recall that Thomas feels that we probably don't need molecular
nanotechnology as envisioned by Drexler to do the job. (Hope you're right,
by the way!).  Is this what you mean, Thomas, when you say Blue Gene "isn't
directly important"?  Do you mean that you do not believe it is directly
important to the non-nanotechnological approach I understand you think will
do the job?  Or are you only suggesting that you don't feel that Blue Gene
represents anything truly new for computer science - only just bigger?

Of course, I don't give a fig whether or not Blue Gene is all new in every
way or built from old rubber tires.  I'm only interested in what it can do
and whether it can help us in cryonics.

It looks to me as if it will directly promote our goals in cryonics by
enabling the development of nanotech tools as well as determining how to use
those tools to rebuild damaged proteins.

Is there something important I am missing here?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

George Smith
www.cryonics.org

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