Predicting the effects of changes on living systems
Can scientists predict what happens when they introduce a change into a living system—for example, if they change the structure of a gene or administer a drug? Just as changing one letter can completely change the meaning of a word, the change of a single letter of the genetic code (referred to as a single nucleotide polymorphism, or SNP) can subtly affect the meaning of a gene's instructions or alter them completely, making the effect of any change extremely hard to predict. Such changes are thought to be responsible for much of the variation between members of a single species—for example, in susceptibility to different diseases. The ability to successfully predict the effect of such changes would accelerate drug discovery and provide a deeper understanding of the processes of life.