It's more like a 3d printer. But that 3d printer can print a computer which in turn has while loops, function calls and if statements.
Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?
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Re: Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I bet there is way more quantum phenomena reasons involved in why that system was selected for being less fragile and having better stability/survaibability for a wider range of cases. Thinking in classical compute terms there is like asking for robots that inevitably break without the slightest chance of self repair, much less do it at minimal effort.
Yeah I think there's a paper about how brains most likely represent some things with quantum states which may explain why we don't understand them yet.
Is it about the microtubules in brain cells?
Dr. Stuart Hameroff comes to mind [1]
His hypothesis is the "less incorrect" I've heard of.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpUVot-4GPM&list=PLOfMRzYBxE...
Re: Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?
#83With our archaic use of Von-Neumann architecture, bacteriophages must think so little of us.
Re: Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?
#84Yes, DNA has rough equivalents to condition logic and loops, although not in a way that is as engineerable as a digital computer with a stack. The op-amp (which is a transistor that uses feedback, typically to amplify) is the one element that has a close analogy (hah) in biology (feedback systems based on transcription-controlling regulatory proteins).
The other really cool example taht came up early in my education is the yeast mating switch. Yeast (s. cerevisiae) can be one of two "genders" and can only mate with the opposite gender. Yeast can change their gender: they keep two copies (alternates) of a single gene, and "cut/paste" one of the alternates into a different "currently active gender" location (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_conversion is the general process, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mating_of_yeast#Mechanics_of_t... is the mechanical process in yeast). It has some similarity to a flip flop.
So I think the right level to think at is not the abstraction of computer programming languages, but circuit elements. Which is what makes these brilliant articles so much fun: https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/pdf/S1535-6108(02)00133-2.p... and https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jo...
To cut to the chase, engineering biology is a major pain due to the long evolutionary history of biological mechanisms, which makes them somewhat esoteric and abstruse. there is so much that can be said, but over tme, I've found that expounding on this is not very helpful.
Re: Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?
#85(Slightly) related: Chemlambda[1], simulating combinatory logic and lambda calculus with molecules.
Re: Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?
#86Yes, DNA has rough equivalents to condition logic and loops, although not in a way that is as engineerable as a digital computer with a stack. The op-amp (which is a transistor that uses feedback, typically to amplify) is the one element that has a close analogy (hah) in biology (feedback systems based on transcription-controlling regulatory proteins). The other really cool example taht came up early in my education…
Isn't this the ultimate case of "Software archeology in a mature programming environment" (as Vernor Vinge might put it)?
Re: Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of how we conceive of computation today is based on observation of nature. It's the a logical conclusion to the study of logic, which is a line of inquiry that dates back to antiquity when sophistry was becoming a real institution and there was yet no real systematic way of determining if something was true other than whether it sounded true.
I'm not sure that nature and logic are related in the way you imply. A different question: Is not the atomic indivisible of computing no more that a simple switch? A binary? Is there an equivalent for this in the human mind/brain? I suspect not but would like to hear from someone who knows more.
Logical thought is the lines of thought that consistently lets us predict nature. Without nature there would be no such thing as fact, and without fact, there can be no logic, since a proposition can't be true or false.
Re: Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?
#88I feel like the only possible answer is “we don’t know”
Re: Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?
#89In middle age, I (a computer science grad and working programmer) went to graduate school for molecular biology. In the early days of studying biological systems, I was struck by how much they were like computer code, or at least logic constructs. I remember to this day the moment I realized that my orderly world of 0s and 1s was being saturated and methylated and energized in ways that were utterly unpredictable by (the current state of) simple logic constructs. And that's the day I learned why we still have "wet" labs, to actually test things empirically, rather than vainly try to predict them computationally. :-)
Re: Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I mean by aliens using neural nets is that we don't know what percent of evolved intelligent species would have neural nets as an integral part of their cognition like we do. And we don't know what alternative paths there are to the evolution of intelligence.
I think the way life is built on earth is the rule throughout the universe. For any type of organic “computation” there needs to be something similar to a neural net. Perhaps a different “implementation” but it should be largely the same.
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