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The Art, Music And Computer Science Of DNA 95
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.'"
Let's not forget... (Score:5, Interesting)
Pre-DNA Discovery DNA References? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Pre-DNA Discovery DNA References? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pre-DNA Discovery DNA References? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pre-DNA Discovery DNA References? (Score:3, Informative)
I know... (Score:1, Informative)
You heard it here first... (Score:4, Funny)
Adventurers quote =) (Score:1)
Bad Programming? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bad Programming? (Score:2, Interesting)
So, that's how nature writes spaghetti code. Constantly commenting out loops, etc.
Re:Bad Programming? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Bad Programming? (Score:1)
* Or a few C programs at IOCCC [ioccc.org] that pack LOT of functionality into a small program?
what we REALLY need... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:what we REALLY need... (Score:1)
Bad programming? Well.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bad programming? Well.... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Uhm...it's more like 120 billion years, give or take.
Of course, I guess that's all considered legacy code by now, isn't it?
Re:Bad programming? Well.... (Score:1)
Also, you're counting the total time span for countless child processes, not the uptime of one single process.
Bad Programmer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, that sure is an arrogant statement. The chemical, physical and biological systems of nature are the most complex systems we know of. Nature is influences by a seeingly infinate number of variables. We don't understand much more than we do.
Our understanding of the world is far too small to be critiszing nature works and it's language. When humanity can create a WORKING system thats 1/1000th as complex as the natural world is when we can even start to make arrogant statements such as this. Today is not yet that day.
Re:Bad Programmer? (Score:2)
I think that was kind of the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad Programmer? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bad Programmer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Natural selection cannot play God, because it is a blind process with no goal in mind and no means to get to a predetermined endpoint.
-John Alcock, Animal Behavior, 7th ed.
Programs are tools for a purpose. DNA is not.
Re:Bad Programmer? (Score:2)
You're actually saying that DNA is "spagetti-code" because it's created at random. No objections here
-
Re:Bad Programmer? (Score:2)
For instance, cheetahs didn't get faster in able to catch prey - one day, a faster cheetah was born who had the potential to survive longer, and he mated more, and spread his "fastness" through DNA - these individuals had greater potential than the rest of the individuals in the population, and the DNA changed in
Re:Bad Programmer? (Score:1)
lot of goto's as well. Goto's produce
'code' that is hard for us to
understand. Perhaps the only efficient
way to grow the 'wiring' that
constitutes a human brain is organically
without concern for complication. I suspect (I
do not know, I'm not an expert) that as
long as AI researchers look for an elegant
solution, they are destined to miss the
goal. Nature's designer doesn't seem to
share the human passion for regular
polygons, straight lines and clearly
stated theorems. Phys
Re:Bad Programmer? (Score:2)
I love that sentence. Yep, and I don't have much more money than I have either.
Our understanding of the world is far too small to be critiszing nature works and it's language.
We shouldn't criticize nature works and it's language? OOOooo! OOoo! NATURE! It's arrogant to talk about NATURE! LOL. Could you possibly be thinking "god's works and god's language"? Why else would you be offended? Well if you mean god then why not come out and SAY god?
When humanity can
Re:Bad Programmer? (Score:1)
Re:Uh Oh... (Score:1, Funny)
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.
Anyone else....? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Anyone else....? (Score:1)
Genetic Programming (Score:5, Interesting)
How ignorant of you to say that. There was an article in the Feb. 2003 issue of Scientific American about genetic programming - the creation of new devices and electronic circuity by computer.
It basically involves starting out the core components (resistors, inductors, capacitors, etc) and a design (for a voltage-current converter, perhaps). A supercomputer is able to rewire the circuit through basic evolutionary processes including crossover, copying, and extinction, and come up with a much more efficient circuit.
The resulting circuitry is so effective and original that there have been designs that earned approval from the patent office. They're so complex, much like nature's genetic code.
Sure, it might look like spaghetti code - but you mean to tell me, nature is a bad programmer? Heh.
Google search on genetic programming [google.com]
Everything2: Genetic programming [everything2.com]
What is Genetic Engineering? [genetic-programming.com]
Re:Genetic Programming (Score:2)
Carry on...
Re:Genetic Programming (Score:3, Informative)
And, IMO, it's a very bad idea to hand out patent monopolies for designs that no human invented, especially if no one can even understand how the damn thing works!
It's not that patents on evolved solutions -- which are both computationally expensive to produce, and to manufacture physically -- wouldn't necessarily promote progress (unless we're talking software algorithms), but t
Re:Genetic Programming (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Genetic Programming (Score:2)
I have tried to point this out on multiple occasions, but slashdot readers are hung up on the fact that some people seriously abuse patents. Not everyone does.
In this case, the patentability of an invention provides a direct comparison between genetic programming (or in fact, any AI that purports to be able to design or invent software or hardware) and human intelligence.
With such a yardstick, we can directly measure the progress that genetic p
James Watson. (Score:3, Informative)
It got to be the Google logo [google.com]. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories [cshl.org] has been very active in celebrating this. Among a few other things, they've had a really nice lecture series to commemorate the event.
I'm a little bit closer to the whole thing since I've done some genetics work (mostly at the Columbia [columbia.edu] Genome Center [columbia.edu]). My current work involves some genetic manipulation, but that's not the main focus.
Also, I happen to personally know James Watson. I first met him when he spoke at my commencement. But, I shouldn't tell that story, because it has some racist (and very amusing) content... which would only get me modded as a troll. I've kind of worked with him a bit since then, and he's really a very nice, down to earth, intelligent guy. He hasn't really let this whole thing go to his head.
Anyway, it's very nice to see the general public taking a little bit of interest in science. Maybe this will help to turn some of the scientific illiterates into elites [phds.org]...
Re:James Watson. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:James Watson: Theif, Fraud. (Score:2, Informative)
Not alleged theft, but well established, and admitted. Maurice Wilkins gave Watson and Crick the keys to Franklin's lab, and the locked drawer where she kept her X-ray photos. Of the DNA that she grew. Using the X-ray camera she designed and built herself .
In their own defence, they tried to dismiss her as a mere "lab tech" (with a Ph.D. and several publications? I don't think so!) and then put her down in their book The Double Helix by wondering repeatedly, in print, whether she'd look any
Finding DNA solutions (Score:5, Funny)
"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.
Re: Finding DNA solutions (Score:1)
> "Geez, it says here that the next 24,000 lines of code are wholly dedicated to picking one's nose!"
Yes, but it's just a mutation of the scratch-your-arse code.
Think of it as OOP-style inheritance in action.
I suppose DNA could be like computer software, if. (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Can anyone explain this to me? (Score:1, Informative)
The original quote said, "DNA is spaghetti code because nature has been tinkering with the system for billions of years like a bad programmer."
The writer and/or editor added the word "like" because they felt it corrected a grammar problem with the sentence, captured the tone better (which may have gotten lost when writing down the sentence), or it made the sentence more clear.
Re:Can anyone explain this to me? (Score:2, Informative)
no analogies allowed (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, this pulls the analogy apart from the inside: no aesthetic or moral judgments, no writer-figure ghosting in the background. What we have is a an autonomous, self-organising system - a far more interesting prospect if you ask me.
Of course, calling it "spaghetti-code" enables you to insert that programmer-figure into the argument. All spaghetti-code needs re-factoring right? Tweaking to make it "right" make it work "better"? I dunno; the self-autonomous self-organising model has worked quite well up to now...and, lets face it, when has trying to make something "better" produced less bugs than you first started with? Particularly with something you barely understand in the first place and are desperately trying to portray with ill-thought out analogies.
h.
Like a bad programmer? (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft Take note (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft Take note (Score:2)
Black Plague?
Smallpox?
Polio?
Ebola?
.
Re:Microsoft Take note (Score:1)
A better example of an exploit would be telling someone to take their right hand and pat their head, take their left and rub their tummy.. and then laugh as the buffer overflow makes them fall on their arse.
Re: Microsoft Take note (Score:1)
> Even though it is composed of major spaghetti code...
...and is attributed to a bad programmer hacking away at it for billions of years
Well after all, it implements the control program for a machine that makes spaghetti. What kind of code were you expecting?
>
Well, code does tend to become more spaghetti-like the longer it is maintained.
> DNA has not suffered a root level exploit yet!
Viruses exploit it all the time.
correction (Score:4, Informative)
It's kind of funny, everyone seems to be making this mistake, I heard the vice president of Clonaid talk just yesterday, and he said the same thing. Not that Clonaid is a legitimate company.
Re:correction (Score:1, Informative)
Twenty years ago... (Score:4, Interesting)
If you haven't ever picked it up, give it a try. You can read it on a very superficial level and enjoy the dialogs among the characters, flip through it for the Escher prints...but eventually you'll start digging deeper and see things in the same words that you didn't see before. Highly recommended!
Re:Twenty years ago... (Score:2)
I second that. I do have to say that the Godel part of the book is more interesting and enlightening than the Escher and Bach parts, though. Only after reading GEB I actually understood what Godels Theorem was about.
JP
(I wonder why I can't use ö? Now I have to spell Godel's name wrong.)
Not the only musician composing w/ DNA... (Score:4, Informative)
His name is Brent D. Hugh, and he has downloadable
Happy listening!
Ahhh (Score:3, Funny)
Source code for a bacterium (Score:3, Funny)
like a bad programmer (Score:2)
SB
Re:like a bad programmer (Score:1)
A variation on the theme... (Score:2, Interesting)
It doesn't matter how elegant your implementation is, once an optimising compiler has done it's business the results aren't going to be very pretty to look at (or easy to understand).
As soon as a talented group of software engineers develops a useful decompiler/dissassembler for them, the geneticists will start to be freed from the low level detail overload and some of the elegance of the design will no doubt b
basta! (Score:2)
spaghetti code? (Score:1)
Molecular music (Score:2, Informative)
Dr. Linda Long had been doing something similar [molecularmusic.com] with Music of the Plants and Music of the Body.
Comparing DNA to software (Score:1)
Does that mean that Men are from Real, Women are from Microsoft?
Billions of Years? (Score:2, Insightful)
That isn't very efficient. Microsoft did the same thing with the Windows codebase in only 20 years ...
Seriously, though, I don't think this statement is as arrogant as
ack (Score:2)
I dont know that I could imagine a worse metaphor. Anyone that has ever studied the tendencies of human beings to be insanely ethnocentric and myopic should appreciate what I mean. To make an analogy that the simplistic beauty of DNA is anything like "spaghetti code" is hilarious. You're comparing a bad algorithm method with an incredibly complex (yet very beautiful in its simplis
Re:ack (Score:2)
Biology is a hack, albeit a very successful one (Score:3, Informative)
As a molecular biologist/computer progammer, I think you are giving DNA too much credit. Just as a single error in a piece of code can cause it to crash, a single base mutation in an organism's DNA can either a)cause it to abo
Realsoft and Microsoft (Score:1)
Did anybody else read this and think:
"Realsoft and Microsoft might not be too happy bein