Slashdot Mirror
DNA's Error Detecting Code
MagnetarJones writes "Science News Online and Nature.com - Genetic information stored in DNA is read out - transcribed - every time living cells make a new protein molecule to perform some cell function. And this information is copied onto a new strand of DNA when a cell divides. The consequences of wrongly read or copied information can be disastrous. Malfunctioning genes can cause diseases and defects. Errors can occasionally have beneficial effects - they create the mutations that drive the evolutionary process - but they are usually detrimental. Strands of DNA carry information--of the genetic sort--encoded in their chemical structure. Chemist Dónall A. Mac Dónaill of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, has now shown that patterns inherent in the chemical makeup of DNA correspond to a digital error-detecting code. His report appears in the Sept. 12 Chemical Communications."
Not only a repeat, but we pretty much decided that he's not telling us anything new. Suprise! DNA is more reliable if you require 3 valid hydrogen bonds, than if you only require two, or one. Only two interesting points to the article: They showed that the full alphabet of the even parity (4,3) code isn't used because those nucleotides would be unstable. Another Suprise! An alphabet of 4 yields 2 bits of information per nucleotide. The other interesting thing I found in the paper is that the normal polymerase will replicate a strand of odd-parity nucleotides just as well as even. Except that wasn't even part of this research, it was in a reference!