Steve Quake

And we're building a substantial internal effort within CZI to help drive this project forward.

I think a lot about those parallels.

And I will say one thing, Philip Ball, I will concede him the point.

The cells are very complicated.

The Genome Project, I mean, the sort of genius there was to turn it from a biology problem into a chemistry problem.

There is a test tube with a chemical in it, work out the structure of that chemical.

And if you can do that, the problem is solved.

I think what it means to have the virtual cell is much more complex and ambiguous in terms of defining what it's going to do and when you're done.

And so we have our work cut out for us there to try to do that.

And that's why a little bit I established our North Star and CZI for the next decade as understanding the mysteries of the cell.

And that word mystery is like very important to me.

You know, I think the molecules, as you pointed out earlier, are understood.

Genome sequenced, protein structure solved or predicted.

We know a lot about the molecules.

Those are, if not solved problems, pretty close to being solved.

And the real mystery is how do they work together to create life in the cell?

And that's what we're trying to answer with this virtual cell project.

So, you know, Eric, it brings to mind one of my favorite quotes from Sidney Brenner, who was such a wit.

And, you know, in 2000, at the sort of early, you know, first flush of success in genomics, he said,

uh biology is drowning in a sea of data and starving for knowledge um yeah a very deep statement right and it's a little bit what that the motivation was for putting the short read archive statistic into the paper there um and you know again for me um part of the value of this endeavor of creating a virtual cell is it's a tool to help us translate data into knowledge