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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."
Ever read it? By Greg Egan, THE most imaginative SF author ever
I mean, theoretically, the Church-Turing thesis states that any algorithm (which, I would hope includes evolution) can be done with the "Turing Machine", which as we all know can be implemented in binary code. So, isn't this basically old news dressed up a different way? (Alternatively, old news with a new perspective for application)
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
We've all probably seen perfectly valid i86 machine code entirely composed of printable ASCII, too, (I recall one which could be used to convert binaries to emailable text, which was used to post DOS utilities back in the day) but that doesn't make it a 'language' that the processor understands
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
There is also something called swing that is a function of time parameter changes in hand keying and can itself convey contextual information like emotion.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
It doesn't matter what base you're writing your DNA code in (base-4, base-2, you name it). What's difficult is creating the ribosomes that will actually do the DNA-protein conversion. If you can do that, you're in business.
Otherwise, it's useful as a theoretical tool but not much else. Still, a synthesis of computers and biological systems just got a little closer. Here's hoping for cyborgs by 2020!
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
Why not? This question is raised by most CS students when they get an introduction in chip-design.
Because its hard. You'd have to create transistors (or whatever) that operate on several volt-levels, instead of on/off. Actually on/off is not that clean; there are flanks to the signal. Could you differentiate between the flank from 3 to 0, and a 1 or 2?
This is pure conjecture. The *early days* could have well been a mixture of many purines and pyrimidines, and the AGCT and U won out in the replication arena due to the thermodynamic stability/instability of their base pairing (A+T, G+C in DNA and A+U, G+C and G+U in RNA). If diaminopurine was a major player, then it should have survived. It didn't, so there is really no reason to believe that it ever was a major (if any) player in the genetic game.
"You wanna see something cool... how about DNA having a parity bit?? Take a peek...."
Here's another something else interesting -- the equivalent of a DNA RAID Array, found in the microbe Deinococcus radiodurans. This particular bacterium has the distinction of being the most radiation-resistant organism known.
D. radiodurans posses four copies of its circular chromosome, stacked together like a roll of Lifesavers. This alignment allows for fast and efficient repair of any errors.
Binary is not only Simple, any Language using a larger Alphabet could be encoded using binary.
Uhm. I don't have any proof to back this up, but it seems obvious to me that any symbolic system can be encoded using any other symbolic system, as long as both systems are non-degenerate. It's all about arbitrary base arithmetic, right?
So, technical challenges aside, there's no purely mathematical reason why base 2 makes more sense than any other base.
Personally, I prefer to do all my math with base 1 arithmetic. It's a lot easier. 111 + 11111 = 11111111.
I write in my journal
Morse is a code that is overlaid on that data link, and has its own symbols that can be expressed as strings of data link on or off bits, only approximately, because Morse is not a clocked code. How many data link one bits there are to a dot has to do with the ratio of a dot length that the operator is sending at that moment (remember he's hand-keying) to the time constant of the key-ckick filter.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.