The Joy of Rediscovery

A key goal of science is to discover new information, and it is one of the great joys of science to believe you have done so.  Sometimes it really does prove novel and interesting - an experience our genome explorations at Warp Drive Bio gave me often - and sometimes the joy is blunted by realizing what you thought was novel is already known.  When I was a graduate student I was on an immense high having found what seemed revolutionary while trawling through Genbank, but then a few days later I uncovered a Cell paper less than a year earlier which had shown that Archea possessed a Eukaryote-like transcription initiation system.  So close yet so far!  But there is also a special joy in certain rediscoveries, when without trying at all a fundamental fact about the universe just reveals itself in your data.  One of my New Year's resolutions is to rediscover the discipline to write frequently in this space, and so to kick that off early (and get the 2025 count to an even one quarter of a 96-well plate) I'm going to review my favorite rediscovery - one that that surprisingly few (in my opinion) who should know of this result are aware of it.Read more »