

DNA seen through the eyes of a coder - hhm
http://ds9a.nl/amazing-dna/index.html

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timr
Mostly good, but there's also a rather huge hole: he left out RNA. It's more
than just an object file; RNA molecules are exceedingly complicated "programs"
in and of themselves.

DNA gets transcribed into RNA, and from there, a whole universe of
interactions takes place, for which we're only beginning to understand a few.
The ribosome is an excellent example: it's a _huge_ protein/RNA complex, which
is also an enzyme responsible for enabling the second part of the central
dogma. The closest analogy I can think of would be something like the source
for an embedded language interpreter -- the cellular machinery compiles some
genomic code, producing a machine which then has the ability to interpret
_other_ parts of the genome, in a different language.

Of course, the more we learn, the more these crude analogies break down. For
example, it's becoming increasingly clear that the three-dimensional structure
of the DNA and RNA molecules play a critical role in determining their
function and regulation; this, in turn, is regulated partially by their
sequence. There's really no equivalent analogy to this phenomenon in the
computer world.

There were lots of other niggly errors (e.g. "GC" is hardly a universal
"comment code" for the genome), but on the whole, a decent set of analogies.

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hhm
And interesting errata and corrections here:
<http://programming.reddit.com/info/64dlz/comments/>

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eusman
nice! now where is my API?!

