Slashdot Mirror
DNA Goes Binary
Anonymous Coward writes "Chemists in the United States have constructed the simplest possible genetic language. Like Morse or binary code, it has only two letters - but it can orchestrate some of the basic molecular reactions needed for life to evolve."
It basically goes: it's no use thinking of such 'arbitrary' things, because you know what, if it had been base 2, and we all had 12 fingers, your post would have been:
As the article points out, RNA and DNA both are constructed of 2 amino acids *: X, Y. Is there a reason for why nature used two instead of 4 ? I'm curious as to the scientific answer why we have 12 fingers as well. Both 4 and 10 seem arbritary, or are they?
There are certain things that have a 'scientific explanation', like why all life is most likely carbon based (because Carbon is a 'small atom', and has a very very complicated structure allowing it to form very varied types of bonds (tripple, double, single), which allow for long chains of molecules -- it has been argued in fact that Silicium, which is very similar to Carbon in all respect apart from it's not being a 'small' atom wouldn't be suitable because it wouldn't be as flexible as carbon based chains, and hence they would break easily... anyways, offtopic).
If the original genetic material was 'binary', this is going to create quite a debate on how the shift to 'quaternary' genetic material happened into being. Possible arguments are that two different systems of genetic material merged, It made the 'evolutionary step' (insert miracle or magic here). Other interesting debate will set up about what the benefits and detractors are with each 'File system'. What metabolic implications are there to the reproductive process if there is possibly an alternate genetic 'file system'. The metabolic implications could be a significant reason due to the fact that reproduction is such an energy consuming activity in almost all species that I know of. Maybe there were both a binary and a quaternary system around and due to energy/metabolic needs one died out. Some other interesting issues would be error correcting properties of a genetic file system. Some quaternary DNA is fairly robust I have been told. Capable of replacing missing bits. Which could be handy in the mitosis process which could be frought with errors due to environmental factors such as cell chemistry, viral issues, radiation, cell wall capabilities and strengths, etc. It will be interesting to follow up on the Binary related implications and their quaternary comparisons.
As a physicist by training (though not by profession), I take issue with this basic principle. The fine structure constant, e, pi, hbar, c.... these are all "weird" constants we observe in various places in the universe. Some of them have deeper meaning that we have discovered, or at least relationships that connect otherwise seemingly disparate areas of math, physics, or whatever. Some, as far as we know, are still arbitrary free parameters. As I remember it, the Standard Model currently has something like 5 or 6 free parameters in it.... if you fix these, you get all of modern physics to pop out (well, roughly like that). Are these random? Are they arbitrary? We don't know yet, but we shouldn't stop asking the questions.
Also, I know there are different forms of the anthropic principle (weak and strong) - I forget the exact distinction, and I believe what we are describing more or less corresponds to the strong form. The weak form is more watered down and palatable to a general scientific audience.
This is the second time in the past week I've winced after reading the title of a story here at Slashdot. The first, of course, was the story about Science choosing small RNAs as their story of the year. I'm a biologist, and both of these stories are so obviously written by people who didnt understand them, that it is embarassing to read them. Atleast thats how it seemed to me. Slashdot is mostly a computer geek hangout, and so the stories have to placed in geek-terms, I guess, but they dont have to be WRONG and OVER-simplified! A lot of the comments are factually incorrect too. What I'm getting at is a proposal: Appoint Slashdotters who are qualified in various fields: Biology, Physics and other specialized areas to edit stories about those topics, and decide whether a story is worth posting. This story for example, is not Slashdot-news-worthy in the least, and biologists here will agree -- its more a cool technical result than "binary DNA"; sheesh!
You're missing the point. You changed the form of the thing when you tried to fit it into a computer analogy.
It's a serious biological discovery, in some respects - it makes the DNA system more plausible on early earth, and it's a much simpler system which DNA could have grown out of.
Your analogy makes this sound like wasted effort "just to prove it's possible", their work is part of research to explain the evolution of the genome.
We've all probably seen perfectly valid i86 machine code entirely composed of printable ASCII, too
:)
Remember Code Red? Whoever wrote that one managed to embed x86 machine code instructions in a frigging URL!
I hate to say it, but that impressed me deeply.
Sounds like it should say that researchers created a 1-bit DNA to contrast our traditional 2-bit implementation. ;)
Neat trick to guess what the building blocks might have been, long after they have been out-competed into oblivion. Makes me wonder if a higher-order-bit DNA is yet to evolve--or perhaps they have but turned out to be less competitive than good-'ol 2-bit.
Remember, these are chemists, not paleobiologists, so they used diaminopurine, presumably because it was easier to artificially create the strands using it. Historical accuracy is not the point, this is a proof of concept.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!