The Art, Music And Computer Science Of DNA

Build6 writes "As part of the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA's double-helix structure, many news publications are writing about what has been done with the discovery so far; The Economist has a very interesting one about DNA's use in art and music. ... You can read all about it either by picking up a copy of The Economist (it's well worth the money, I've subscribed for over a decade), or online." And Clint Harris writes "As part of its series commemorating the 50th anniversary of 'the first scientific description of DNA' NPR recently aired a story comparing DNA to software (RealAudio or Windows Media). 'For many, the best analogy for the way DNA works is that it's like a computer program at the heart of every cell. Some of its programming tricks bear an uncanny resemblance to ones the human brain has dreamed up...DNA is [like] spaghetti code because nature has been tinkering with the system for billions of years like a bad programmer.'"

Comments

Pre-DNA Discovery DNA References?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it really a coincidence that a Caduceus/Kerykeion has a pair of intertwined snakes? (Some people say that's proof of ancient knowledge!)

You heard it here first...

[Anonymous Coward]

...God's a VB kiddie :)

what we REALLY need...

[ansleybean]

object oriented genes.

Bad programming? Well....

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as YOUR code has had uptime of 120 years or so, then you can say nature wrote us poorly.

Finding DNA solutions

[teamhasnoi]

I don't see why the scientists don't just look at the REM statements...they'd have that stuff figured out in no time.

"Geez, it says here that the next 24,000 lines of code are wholly dedicated to picking one's nose!"

I'm sure that they would find that politicians are the result of millions of unreturned GOSUB commands.

I suppose DNA could be like computer software, if.

[Anonymous Coward]

...I could mate Microsoft Office with Star Office and crossbreed an office suite that is both free and feature complete...

Re:Bad Programmer?

[milkmandan9]

The chemical, physical and biological systems of nature are the most complex systems we know of.

Especially if these chemical, physical, and biological systems happen to be female.

Ahhh

[Timesprout]

Now you tell me. I just hired nature last week. She told me she had loads of experience coding on big projects.

Re:Uh Oh...

[Anonymous Coward]

(plus the EULA wouldn't be fun)

Agreed. I'm sure it would include a passage about duplication and reproduction without a license from MS. Well thank god, finally a reason to have MSDN site licenses.

Source code for a bacterium

[theCoder]

#include <unistd.h>

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
while (1) fork();
return 0;
}

So, you think if I run this long enough it'll evolve into an AI? :)

Re:Genetic Programming

[Anonymous Coward]

You misspelled "ludacris"