BLAST FROM THE PAST
Steve Ernst, Marv
Hackert and Jon
Robertus modelling
proteins in 1978.
hen biochemists Marv
Hackert, Jon Robertus
and Steve Ernst began using
the Vector General computer
graphics system (pictured
here) in 1978 to assist with modeling protein
structures, it was at best a very limited and very
expensive tool. For the roughly $250,000 which
the university spent on the system, researchers
got black and white images plotted in straight
lines (no curves), and they still had to do most
of the work themselves, entering the thousands
of coordinates into the computer in order for it
to do its work. The computer was less powerful,
says Robertus, than a $400 PC is today.
“Our attitude was: that’s nice, but it’s slow,”
says Hackert. The computer was almost an after- “Now we can feed an electron density map
“In the early days,
thought to the primary process of modeling into a computer and have a model in less than
new protein structures in a Richards Box—also an hour,” says Hackert. “In the early days, it was
known as “Fred’s Folly”—which used a light like the California Gold Rush. You’d be in the
it was like the
bulb, a mirror, and a series of stacked transpar- stream and you’d fi nd a nugget and hold it up
encies to transfer the information from X-ray to the light and appreciate it. This was when we California Gold Rush.”
crystallography into a ball-and-spoke model of were just starting to solve these structures, and
a protein molecule. every new structure was an event. Now, when
The process took months, and feeding the we have tens of thousands of structures, it’s like that people tend to be interested only in the end
coordinates into the computer could add blasting a mountainside, and washing away the product. Back then you had to know what you
another month. The computer representation dirt with high-pressure hose. It’s all automated. were doing when you were doing it by hand.
was helpful, says Robertus, but “not essen- You never get the joy of holding up the nugget.” And in the early days of computer modeling
tial.” Not until the 1990s did the software and “We have to be careful not to be too curmud- you also, often, had to write your own software.
hardware become sophisticated and powerful geonly,” says Robertus. “Nobody wants to go You developed a fuller understanding of the
enough to really revolutionize the fi eld. back, but it is true, I think, that it’s now so easy underlying science.” do
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