Sim pathogen

Scientists at Stanford University and the J. Craig Venter Institute have developed the first software simulation of an entire organism, a humble single-cell bacterium that lives in the human genital and respiratory tracts. (NYTimes, 7/20/2012)

I am curious-mycoplasma. From The Inquisitor.

Mycoplasma genitalium, whose full-time job is causing an STD, has the simplest genome of any known organism, at 525 genes (compared to 4,288 for E. coli, and a bit over 23,000 for a mouse or a man), but it takes 128 computers to run the simulation.

The inevitable theological part, for me, is like this: if this is the handiwork of a god, the watchmaker who left his watch on the beach x many millennia ago, why is it so absurdly complex? Why so roundabout in getting where it's going, why so profoundly inelegant? Why is there no engineer's pride here?

The scientist never knows quite how to say this, but if it isn't God, that's because it's better than God! More true to life, funnier, more original, in the end more beautiful.

So congratulations to the folks at Stanford and Venter. Not sure I want to live to see the simulated mouse (by the time it's ready, I suppose, it'll be down to a couple of dozen computers, while our phones will be holding things like the international Zagat, self-updating star and planet charts,  and the complete bloodlines of all the thoroughbreds that ever lived).