The human genome is full of viruses
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The human genome is full of viruses
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Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#2There is also the theory that the eukaryote nucleus IS a virus
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#3I've always thought of DNA as mere "data". "This goes here, that goes there", etc. And I've always wondered how such a relatively small amount of data could describe the massive complexity of a full-size organism.
But this makes it sound like DNA is data the way Lisp is data: it can contain procedures and transformations and meta-statements about itself, and even mutate during the course of being interpreted. That would explain so much.
The use of the term "virus" in software seems to be more apt than I'd thought.
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#4There was an interesting article a while back on them playing a part in schizophrenia. "The Insanity Virus" https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/the-insanity-virus
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#5I've always thought of DNA as mere "data". "This goes here, that goes there", etc. And I've always wondered how such a relatively small amount of data could describe the massive complexity of a full-size organism. But this makes it sound like DNA is data the way Lisp is data: it can contain procedures and transformations and meta-statements about itself, and even mutate during the course of being interpreted. That wo…
You’ve got half of it, but the other half is the existence of the cell to interpret the data. The DNA is like a Lisp program, but how much good would a Lisp program be without a computer to run it?
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#6I've always thought of DNA as mere "data". "This goes here, that goes there", etc. And I've always wondered how such a relatively small amount of data could describe the massive complexity of a full-size organism. But this makes it sound like DNA is data the way Lisp is data: it can contain procedures and transformations and meta-statements about itself, and even mutate during the course of being interpreted. That wo…
I had a thought the other day. It's theoretically possible for a computer virus to lead to a biological virus. Corrupting the data of a computer responsible for manufacturing a vaccine, for example.
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#7There was an interesting article a while back on them playing a part in schizophrenia. "The Insanity Virus" https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/the-insanity-virus
What a great read! I find it so crazy that after decades of thinking that there's all this "junk DNA" in us, it turns out that it may serve a purpose after all, even if that purpose is malicious.
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#8I've always thought of DNA as mere "data". "This goes here, that goes there", etc. And I've always wondered how such a relatively small amount of data could describe the massive complexity of a full-size organism. But this makes it sound like DNA is data the way Lisp is data: it can contain procedures and transformations and meta-statements about itself, and even mutate during the course of being interpreted. That wo…
> how such a relatively small amount of data could describe the massive complexity of a full-size organism
The busy beaver numbers are an interesting connection here.
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#9I've always thought of DNA as mere "data". "This goes here, that goes there", etc. And I've always wondered how such a relatively small amount of data could describe the massive complexity of a full-size organism. But this makes it sound like DNA is data the way Lisp is data: it can contain procedures and transformations and meta-statements about itself, and even mutate during the course of being interpreted. That wo…
I had a thought the other day. It's theoretically possible for a computer virus to lead to a biological virus. Corrupting the data of a computer responsible for manufacturing a vaccine, for example.
Or the converse of this, malicious DNA has been used to exploit sequencing computers. (https://dnasec.cs.washington.edu/)
I swear I heard Mikki Hypponen talk of a self-replicating version of this that exploited the sequencers to encode the exploit into other sequenced DNA, making this self-replicating, but I can't find a link.
Re: The human genome is full of viruses
#10I've always thought of DNA as mere "data". "This goes here, that goes there", etc. And I've always wondered how such a relatively small amount of data could describe the massive complexity of a full-size organism. But this makes it sound like DNA is data the way Lisp is data: it can contain procedures and transformations and meta-statements about itself, and even mutate during the course of being interpreted. That wo…
You’ve got half of it, but the other half is the existence of the cell to interpret the data. The DNA is like a Lisp program, but how much good would a Lisp program be without a computer to run it?
But in this case the program also creates the computer it runs on.