title: The Best Model of a Cat Is Several Cats.
abstract: Modern biotechnology is emerging at the intersection of engineering, biology, physics, and computer science. As such it carries with it history from several disparate fields of research including a strong tradition in deductive reasoning primarily derived from discovery focused molecular biology and physics. Engineering biological systems is a complex undertaking requiring a broader set of epistemic tools and methods than what is usually applied in today's discovery based research. Inductive reasoning as commonly used in computer science has proven to be a very efficient approach to build knowledge about complex megadimensional datasets, including synthetic biology applications. The authors conclude that the multi-heuristic nature of modern biotechnology makes it an engineering field primed for inductive reasoning to complement the dominating deductive tradition.
authors.affiliation: DNA2.0 Inc., 1140 O'Brien Drive, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA. Electronic address: cgustafsson@dna20.com.
authors.forename: Claes
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gustafsson
authors.affiliation: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra (BCN), Catalonia, Spain. Electronic address: jordi.vallverdu@uab.cat.
authors.forename: Jordi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Vallverdú
mesh_terms: D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D057005:Bioengineering; D001709:Biotechnology; D003198:Computer Simulation; D019359:Knowledge; D008954:Models, Biological; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012106:Research
keywords: knowledge; modeling; reproducibility; statistics; truth