"Kim Stanley Robinson - Forty Signs of Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

Their talk with Yann Pierzinski was indeed interesting. He breezed into the lab just a few days later, as
friendly as ever, and happy to be back at Torrey Pines with a permanent job. He was going to be based
in GeorgeтАЩs math group, he told them, but had already been told by Derek to expect to work a lot with
LeoтАЩs lab; so he arrived curious and ready to go.

Leo enjoyed seeing him again. Yann still had a tendency to become a speed-talker when excited, and he
still canted his head to the side when thinking, as if to flood that half of his brain with blood, in just the
kind of тАЬrapid hydrodynamic forcingтАЭ that they were trying to get away from in their work (and he tilted it
to the right, so was giving the boost to the so-called intuitive side, Leo noted). His algorithm sets were
still works in progress, he said, and underdeveloped precisely in the gene grammars that Leo and Marta
and Brian needed from him for their work; but all that was okay, because they could help him, and he
was there to help them. They could collaborate, and when it came right down to it, Yann was a powerful
thinker, and good to have on the case. Leo felt secure in his own lab abilities, devising and running
experiments and the like, but when it came to the curious mixture of math, symbolic logic, and computer
programming that these biomathematicians dove intoтАФmathematicizing human logic, among other things,
and reducing it to mechanical steps that could be scripted into the computersтАФhe was way out of his
depth. So Leo was happy to watch Yann sit down and plug his laptop into their desktop.

In the days that followed, they tried his algorithms out on the genes of their HDL factory cells, Yann
substituting different procedures in the last steps of his operations, then checking what they got in the
computer simulations, and selecting some for their dish trials. Pretty soon they found one version of the
operation that was consistently good at predicting proteins that matched well with their target
cellsтАФmaking keys for their locks, in effect. тАЬThatтАЩs what IтАЩve been focusing on for the pastyear, тАЭ Yann
said happily after one such success.

As they worked, Pierzinski told them some of how he had gotten to that point in his work, following
aspects of his advisorтАЩs work at Caltech and the like. Marta and Brian asked him where he had hoped to
take it all, in terms of applications. Yann shrugged; not much of anywhere, he told them. He thought the
main interest of the operation was what it revealed about the mathematics of codon function. Just finding
out more about the mathematics of how genes became organisms. He had not thought much about the
implications for clinical or therapeutic applications, though he freely acknowledged they might be there.
тАЬIt stands to reason that the more you know about this, the more youтАЩll be able to see whatтАЩs going on.тАЭ
The rest of it was not his field of interest. It was a classic mathematician thing.

тАЬBut Yann, donтАЩt you see what the applications of this could be?тАЭ

тАЬI guess. IтАЩm not really interested in pharmacology.тАЭ

Leo and Brian and Marta stood there staring at him. Despite his earlier stint there, they didnтАЩt know him
very well. He seemed normal enough in most ways, aware of the outside world and so on. To an extent.

Leo said тАЬLook, let us take you out to lunch. I want to tell you more about what all this could help us
with.тАЭ



THE LOBBYING firm of Branson and Ananda occupied offices off Pennsylvania Avenue, near the