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.'"

I know...

[Anonymous Coward]

the Economist always backs this community on every financial issue. they're well worth the money.

James Watson.

[I'm a racist.]

I've been pleasantly surprised by all the attention the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA has gotten.

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:Can anyone explain this to me?

[Anonymous Coward]

It means that the word "like" wasn't in the original quote, it was instead added by the writer/editor.

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?

[Namaseit]

its in brackets because it wasnt said in the quote but was implied.

correction

[NotAnotherReboot]

It was not the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA, it was the 50th anniversary of the publication of Watson and Crick's paper saying that DNA possibly has a double helix.

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. :p

Not the only musician composing w/ DNA...

[Zanthany]

The "Sonic Gene" mentioned in the Economist article is not the only one. I attended university where one of the piano professors has been working on a project like this for many years now.

His name is Brent D. Hugh, and he has downloadable .mp3s here. [mp3s.com] This has been a pet project of his, and it's definitely worth checking out. His personal site is available here [mwsc.edu] as well.

Happy listening!

Re:Genetic Programming

[Saeger]

The resulting circuitry is so effective and original that there have been designs that earned approval from the patent office.

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 that we'll end up with the richest corporations going for another huge IP landgrab with their "patent invention machines" [slashdot.org] set to 'Ludicrous Speed'. Isn't it bad enough that they've already squatted on our genes?

--

Re:correction

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's more like the 50th anniversary of the paper saying that all DNA possibly has a particular double helix structure. Many people prior to this thought a double helix was possible, some of Franklin's X-ray data (insert Adelaidian plug for Bragg family here) strongly suggested a double helix for one of the forms of DNA (she in fact misunderstood some of her data on the other form so she didn't think it was a double helix, iirc).

Re:Pre-DNA Discovery DNA References?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually that link doesn't give all the information. While it is true that the Cadeuceus was the staff of Hermes and had two intertwined snakes, it doesn't explain why it's associated with the medical profession. Asclepius was the greek god of medicine. According to myth, he carried a staff which he used to heal. That staff had only one snake around it. Somewhere along the way, the Cadeuceus and the staff of asclepius were mixed up.

Re:James Watson: Theif, Fraud.

[stanwirth]

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 more attractive if she did "something more interesting with her hair."

READ ABOUT IT HERE [amazon.com]

Molecular music

[zoeblade]

Dr. Linda Long had been doing something similar [molecularmusic.com] with Music of the Plants and Music of the Body.

Biology is a hack, albeit a very successful one

[dexter riley]

Most programmers cant write code to do one simple task without having some sort of bug or malady arise, whereas DNA is able to manipulate individual molecules and chemical reactions in order to create a system magnitudes above anything the most brilliant human could think to design.

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 abort during development or b) give it any of a thousand different diseases, from the annoying (myopia) to the deadly (Cystic Fibrosis, Huntington's, Cancer, and so on). The genetic code is a hack; a hack developed over 4 billion years that works just well enough to keep making more copies of itself.

This doesn't mean that life isn't incredible. Biological systems may be kludges, built off the remnants of older versions of itself, out of countless imperfect parts (like DNA which accumulates mutations, or proteins which can be misfolded or poisoned), but it has produced organisms that live in every concievable niche, including one that's trying to figure out how it works!

Computer science is still in its infancy. Right now, we're just learning how to make redundant, parallel systems that don't have to work perfectly with a 100.0% uptime to do their job. My guess is that if we someday develop artificial intelligence, it will use many trillions of small programs, none of which will work perfectly, but which will work in tandem with each other to make amazing things happen.