Bio Machines

Yesterday I heard a good, and information filled, talk by Dustin Penn, a mainstay in the MHC world. He described analyzing the scent of families in secluded Swiss villages. One point was that it was not possible to distinguish familial from nonfamilial individuals. The point of technological thresholds came up in the discussion period and Penn of course pointed out that a dogs nose is much more sensitive than the best machines available to chemists today. I thought, but isn't that why we're Biologists then?