Exploit idea: create an image, which, when taken a shot of, would be written to DNA as a virus. (I know viruses are RNA)
And create a never to be deleted record of images across the infected population?
A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
21–30 of 125 posts
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it would have very high energy requirements. For this trait to survive over generations there would need to be a tremendous evolutionary benefit. What would that be for a “primitive image data”?
Maybe things like "long green shape" (cats' fear of cucumbers because they resemble snakes), or "a series of black and yellow stripes", or even "a black blob with many appendages" to watch out for spiders? Encoding some primitive image data so that further generations know what to avoid or pursue seems like a very tremendous evolutionary benefit.
You need to compare that with an alternative solution where this information is learned by each generation and then asses the survival advantage of having it encoded in DNA. This is outside my field and I don’t have a strong opinion.
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#23This is great and all, but the merge process is still messy as hell
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it would have very high energy requirements. For this trait to survive over generations there would need to be a tremendous evolutionary benefit. What would that be for a “primitive image data”?
Maybe things like "long green shape" (cats' fear of cucumbers because they resemble snakes), or "a series of black and yellow stripes", or even "a black blob with many appendages" to watch out for spiders? Encoding some primitive image data so that further generations know what to avoid or pursue seems like a very tremendous evolutionary benefit.
Yeah, I expect this isn’t going to be how that sort of mechanism works, but it’s always been an interesting concept for me, that while “genetic memory” as presented in much fiction is extremely unlikely just from the sheer entropic hill such mechanisms would have to evolutionarily climb to be able to pass on so much information (on top of the baseline necessary information for reproduction, the majority of memory won’t on average confer a lot of reproductive advantages, so it’s statistically more likely to get optimised out by the random mistakes of evolution, hence entropically “uphill”) …
Yet while this fictional form is unlikely we have quite a lot of good examples and evidence for “inherited information”. You have to be careful with it since it’s too easy to accidentally include side channels for organisms to learn the information and thus break the test. Such as insects being genetically driven towards food by smell at a molecular chemical interaction level, and the smell becoming associated with the information you wish to test. A bee colony can’t be reliably tested unless you raise it from a new queen in an odourless environment if you wish to see if bees genetically know that the shape of a flower is associated with food. It’s tough to subtract the potential that a colony will have learned and “programmed” later generations of bees with things like the classic waggle dancing in order to more efficiently gather food.
We do have good ones though like cats and snake shaped objects, it’s surprisingly consistent, and pops up in some other animal species. It’s wired into our brains a bit to watch out for such threats. There’s a significant bias towards pareidolia in human brains and it’s telling how deeply wired we have some of these things, but it is there and study shows it seems to form well before our cognitive abilities do… these all have some obvious reproductive advantages however so it makes sense that the “instinct” would be preserved over generations as it confers an advantage. But it’s still impressive that it can encode moderately complex information like “looks like the face of my species” or “cylindrical looking objects on the ground might be dangerous”… even if it’s encoded in a lossy subconscious instinctual level.
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#25Exploit idea: create an image, which, when taken a shot of, would be written to DNA as a virus. (I know viruses are RNA)
Do a Quine now!
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#26Man, I have a hard enough time trying to keep track of a micro SD card, imagine misplacing your DNA based files? Seriously tho, using DNA as an information storage medium is a pretty neat concept.
>using DNA as an information storage medium is a pretty neat concept And billions of years old.
Its not often that HN makes me laugh.
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#27Exploit idea: create an image, which, when taken a shot of, would be written to DNA as a virus. (I know viruses are RNA)
There are plenty of DNA viruses. They aren't limited to RNA at all
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#28Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#29I've been up close to one project working in this space. The obstacles are obviously many, but fascinating to see that progress is made nontheless. Clearly a piece of the-future-puzzle.
Re: A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
#30Man, I have a hard enough time trying to keep track of a micro SD card, imagine misplacing your DNA based files? Seriously tho, using DNA as an information storage medium is a pretty neat concept.
>using DNA as an information storage medium is a pretty neat concept And billions of years old.
> And billions of years old.
With not quite good backup strategies.