Separation of concerns

In protein folding

Changing one side-chain on a protein to change a specific function
can often change conformation and function of the protein at a completely different site.
This is either ...

• ... a case of bad separation of concerns (that is tolerable for the host organisms species survival) or
• ... a case of separation of concerns at a higher level of abstraction that we do non yet understand

Both cases can pose interesting research problems but
neither case is useful for fast targeted development.

That is why stiff predictable folding protein motifs are of especial interest.
Prootein that are rather insensitive to local changes.
See: De-novo protein engineering

In design of artificial advanced productive nanosystems

Separation of concerns is highly desirable for

• better testability that is: easier narrowing down of bugs and
• better system comprehesability

In evolution and life

See: Decompression chain#Philosophical

Related

• Decompression chain
• Fat fingers & Floppy fingers – (Finger problems)
• Expanding the kinematic loop
• better system extendability by compsability of smaller predictably behaving sub building-blocks
  Thus there is no need for investing again and again in fom-near-scratch-one-off-research-effort for every new product.

External links

• Wikipedia: Separation of concerns

Generally in research and engineering

In cases where there …
– too many parameters that can be adjusted (for debugging and/or optimization) and
– it takes too much time/effort/money for one single of these many tests/experiments
Clear separation-of-concerns and changing just one parameter at a time is no longer a viable option.
Then there are available statistical methods that can help.

• Youtube video: Test Multiple Variables at Once to Optimize Anything – by NightHawkInLight (Taguchi arrays)
• Wikipedia: Taguchi_methods (German page with other info ~ i.e. more concrete as of 2024-03)
• Wikipedia: Design of experiments (DOE) (German page "statistical experiment-planning")