Biology Will Be the Next Great Computing Platform • Hacker News Board

Re: Biology Will Be the Next Great Computing Platform

#71

Post by ItsMe000001 » Fri, May 04, 2018, 7:04 PM UTC

kharak wrote: post #24

devgutt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO these courses only scratch the surface, good to learn a thing or two, without much applicability. I am right now searching for a degree path in Biochemistry or Molecular Biology online. I want to spend time on it, but be able to actually apply my knowledge. There are so few of them (maybe because of the lab classes, idk). I've found online degrees in ASU ( https://asuonline.asu.edu/online-degree-programs/undergr…

Do you by any chance did come across an online course for biochemistry or something similiar? I've wanted now for quite some time to study biology and change my career in that direction, but no relevant degree seems to be designed for remote study.

Look at the "Principles of Biochemistry" course I linked to. Even when OP says "it's scratching the surface", that was in comparison to a complete several years study, that course by itself is extremely involved and pure biochem. It's "only" a single course, but let's wait what you say after unit 3 - because judging by the forum participation, about 99% of people who join that course won't even make it past the 2/3rd mark. So if you can stomach that one course it would be a good sign. I read that about chemistry in general, should be the same for biochem, that if you study in those fields the load is quite extreme.

Re: Biology Will Be the Next Great Computing Platform

#72

Post by jrq » Fri, May 04, 2018, 9:17 PM UTC

mountainplus wrote: post #54

jrq wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if there was a way to write algorithms that can't be expressed with a von Neumann architecture? Do you know where I can read about what categories of biocomputation there are? Is there a biological Turing machine that's ever been built, or no, I guess it'd be grown? As another commenter said, computation is a more vast category than the simplicity of one instruction and then another instruction. Fantastic th…

I can't answer you directly but perhaps this helps too. I recently finished Summa Technologiae from Stanislaw Lem which does investigate a lot of these questions in many of its chapters. I highly recommend it as it is a detailed, vivid exploration written by a very wise person so much so that it is easy to forget while reading that the book was published more than 50 years ago. But there's also a practical reason why…

I found it online, looks fascinating! Thanks so much!

That's the best kind of book to read, the kind someone wrote after reading a bunch of other books.

Re: Biology Will Be the Next Great Computing Platform

#73

Post by dnautics » Sat, May 05, 2018, 9:04 PM UTC

glenstein wrote: post #61

jerf wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As someone who has a PhD in biochemistry and has been coding since age 5, I find the headline rediculous. You won't be computing in biology.... principles from CS applied to biology which has some validity." I think it may be worth reminding people that modern-day computing is only a subset of computation, and not even necessarily a very large one. Computing with biology has extremely different characteristics from…

>Whatever we are coding in biology will be radically, radically different. ... But I do know that whatever it is, quite a bit of Computer Science will still apply to it. Whenever there's an article about computation and the brain, or computation and biology, there's always someone showing up saying that the comparison is ridiculous because, hey, biology/computers are different. To me, that's always felt like it was m…

it's not about what "computers can't do", it's about what "biology can't do". Or more, appropriately, "what you could maybe push biology's round peg into a square hole and force it to do but we should probably stop and think about whether it's worth the effort".