biology

Warren Gish

Warren Gish is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Warren Gish rather than just read about it. In short: Warren Richard Gish is the owner of Advanced Biocomputing LLC. He joined Washington University School of Medicine as a junior faculty member in 1994, and was a Research Associate Professor of Genetics from 2002 to 2007.

Key takeaways

Warren Gish belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Warren Gish to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Warren Gish from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Warren Richard Gish is the owner of Advanced Biocomputing LLC. He joined Washington University School of Medicine as a junior faculty member in 1994, and was a Research Associate Professor of Genetics from 2002 to 2007.

Education After initially studying physics, Gish obtained an A.B. degree in Biochemistry from University of California, Berkeley, and completed work for his Ph.D. degree in Molecular Biology at the same institution in 1988.

Research Gish is primarily known for his contributions to NCBI BLAST, including creation and support of the BLAST Network Service, development and support of the nr (quasi-nonredundant) databases in February 1991, introduction of gapped BLAST (WU-BLAST 2.0) in May 1996, and his continued work on AB-BLAST. At Washington University in St. Louis, Gish led the genome analysis group which annotated all finished human, mouse and rat genome data produced by the university's Genome Sequencing Center from 1995 through 2002. First available to internal users in December 1989, the NCBI BLAST Network Service was opened to the public in March 1990, shortly after the BLAST manuscript was accepted for publication. This was several months before the paper would appear in print, so the NCBI director requested that availability of the network service not be published. Since the service ran the latest BLAST software on fast SMP hardware against comprehensive, daily-updated sequence databases, word-of-mouth publicity soon established the NCBI as a convenient, one-stop shop for sequence similarity searching. Like the BLAST Network Service, Gish's subsequent independently undertaken projects would rely on word-of-mouth publicity. In 1985, to address a frequent need for rapid identification of restriction enzyme recognition sites in DNA, Gish developed a deterministic finite automaton function library in the C language. The idea of applying a finite-state machine to this problem was suggested by fellow graduate student and Berkeley Software Distribution developer Michael J. Karels, who noted that the finite-state automaton techniques used by grep might be applicable. Gish's DFA implementation used a Mealy machine architecture, which is more compact than an equivalent Moore machine and therefore more efficient. The resulting automata could scan subject sequences for recognition sites in a single pass without backtracking. Although developed independently, the DFA construction method was later observed to effectively consolidate Algorithms 3 and 4 described by Alfred Aho and Margaret J. Corasick. While working at the University of California, Berkeley, in December 1986, Gish sped up the FASTP program

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Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Warren Gish

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Warren Gish claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Warren Gish before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Warren Gish ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Warren Gish

In research: Warren Gish appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Warren Gish in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Warren Gish is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century American biologists, American bioinformaticians, American computer programmers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Warren Gish outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Warren Gish in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Warren Gish means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Warren Gish out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Warren Gish in simple terms?

Why does Warren Gish matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Warren Gish?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Warren Gish.