18th April 2006, 7:42 PM
Well, I've been watching some stuff about programming code and have found some amazing discoveries. Basically, there is a lot of total garbage code in our DNA, and a lot of the "programming" seems to actually be very messy.
Here's an example. There's been a discovery regarding an allele that has to do with clotting (an allele can be likened to the "bit" of the genetic world, many of them will make up a single gene). The discovery is what it actually does. It doesn't actually cause clotting, but rather it turns off another allele. That allele doesn't cause clotting itself, but rather it turns off something needed for clotting to function. Essentially, if this was written code, it would be something like this:
ClotStatus=0
ClotStatus=1
That's a very basic way of putting it, but it is dirty and wasteful code. A lot of discoveries like this make it very clear. Humans make much better programmers than nature :D. Hey, give US a few billion years we should be able to debug that DNA.
There are also lots of left over messy bits from bad transcriptions. For example, there are a number of broken bits of alleles in our genes that corrospond with really old virus...es that got passed down over the generations, and of course the unused bits of leftover code from our genetic ancestors.
All in all, it's that "survival of the just good enough" thing again. DNA isn't clean, but it gets the job done. We'll see how smoothly it runs if we can debug it.
Here's an example. There's been a discovery regarding an allele that has to do with clotting (an allele can be likened to the "bit" of the genetic world, many of them will make up a single gene). The discovery is what it actually does. It doesn't actually cause clotting, but rather it turns off another allele. That allele doesn't cause clotting itself, but rather it turns off something needed for clotting to function. Essentially, if this was written code, it would be something like this:
ClotStatus=0
ClotStatus=1
That's a very basic way of putting it, but it is dirty and wasteful code. A lot of discoveries like this make it very clear. Humans make much better programmers than nature :D. Hey, give US a few billion years we should be able to debug that DNA.
There are also lots of left over messy bits from bad transcriptions. For example, there are a number of broken bits of alleles in our genes that corrospond with really old virus...es that got passed down over the generations, and of course the unused bits of leftover code from our genetic ancestors.
All in all, it's that "survival of the just good enough" thing again. DNA isn't clean, but it gets the job done. We'll see how smoothly it runs if we can debug it.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)