Engineers Invent Programming Language To Build Synthetic DNA 51
vinces99 writes "Chemists soon could be able to use a structured set of instructions to 'program' how DNA molecules interact in a test tube or cell. A team led by the University of Washington has developed a programming language for chemistry that it hopes will streamline efforts to design a network that can guide the behavior of chemical-reaction mixtures in the same way that embedded electronic controllers guide cars, robots and other devices. In medicine, such networks could serve as smart drug deliverers or disease detectors at the cellular level."
Re:exception handling (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is that the "zombies", in this case, defective H proteins, stay in the cell and are NOT really dealt with. They become a new, undefined input in the system that must be accounted for when simulating other cellular processes being performed in parallel inside the cell.
This can lead to a very extensive chain ot unexpected executions and transformations. Dealing with that programmatically is going to make any computer currently in operation attempting it cry to the ghost of Alan Turing and beg for mercy.
If the goal is accurate simulation, then a (try),(catch),(finally) isn't going to work properly.