David B Searls, PhD, Senior Vice President, Bioinformatics GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals
Friday September 26th, 2003, 3:00pm, Swann Lecture Theatre, King's Buildings, University of Edinburgh
The human genome has been called the 'book of life', a natural extension of the long-standing metaphor of DNA as a language. Taking this conceit seriously, we can ask to what extent the genome may profitably be viewed as a work of literature, subject to critical exegesis. While seemingly at opposite poles from the 'hard science' of molecular biology, in fact such an approach is not so far from the increasingly hermeneutic role of the bioinformatician, insofar as both are concerned with comparing texts, detecting subtle patterns and relationships, elucidating theme and variation, etc. In this talk I will explore literary and linguistic aspects of the genome, by means of a 'genomic' textual analysis of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky.
This talk is jointly sponsored by:
- Edinburgh Centre for Bioinformatics
University of Edinburgh School of Informatics
National e-Science Centre