Does DNA have the equivalent of IF-statements, WHILE loops, or function calls?

Maybe by definition: current existing things in evolution are not "more compressable" (for us) without losing meaning? (Their meaning could be estimated though through -leaky- abstractions?)

DNA describes hyperbolic multi-level of logic.

The lowest level programming language (assembly) is designed to

map/correspond/translate directly to hardware electronic bits.

Where, cpu emulates version of turing machine on assembly instructions.

And cpu/hardware is under control of OS ( post-pc boot strap ).

---

The mapping between hardware & assembler may static (compiled) or

interpreted in real-time into a sequence of boolean AND's and OR's.

At the assembly programming language level, the programming language

'TERMINAL' construct is 1:1 with hardware. Such abstractions typically

conveyed using BNF and/or various calculi such epsilon and lambda.

As one progresses through higher level programming lanugages, have to

work one's way through more and more non-ternmal instructions (aka grammar)

to get to just the TERMINAL value to access that 1:1 mapping to 'run'.

---

Given constraints on article length, going to reduce the bodies hyperbolic geometry

descriptions down to a simplified analytic geometric analogy via bodies largest organ -- the skin.

Can look at the skin as mobious strip where, gi tract is internal side compliment of external skin.

Organs can be views as klein bottle chained together & interact/influence each other (per flow through

klein bottle opening and/or perfusion of klein bottle surface.

Scaling down the cline bottle to cell & simplfied 2d spread sheet -- side a, side b and how progress between a & b.

The external/internal enzymes, dna, vitimins/minerals etc influence what happens on the spreadsheet

via dna bnf / 4 symbol autonoma system and/or L-system.

internal function calls equivalent to specific inter-cel functions per triggered by cell resources.

Obviously, organs/cells need 'external function calls/libraries' to work, which are not covered here.

While loops / if loops defined by enzyme/protines/etc created by dna interpretations. aka

while enough protine a exist -> create enzyme b. IF enzyme asdf exists -> create protine 1234

---

So, dna can be viewed as a type of turing machine aka has if / while / etc.. forms of expression.

the rest of the body is just a lambda calculi / epsion calculi / process calclui interpreter/executor.

DNA as the ultimate hyperbolic turing paper tape version of the Zark king[0]

The unbounded creaping feature creature take to the extreme over a few millenea.

---

[0] : https://manybutfinite.com/post/the-thing-king/

I'm imagining a biological variant of eg. Verilog or VHDL, as this seems like the kind of domain where tools that allow for formal verification would be highly desirable.

That is indeed quite nice, yet intelligence seems much more diverse in biological organisms and not always reduced to nodes and edge strengths. The nodes and edges are a way to store data and to modify it that seems particularly well adapted mechanisms based on electricity.

On the other hand, there exists other very different (and slower) biological intelligent mechanisms that are not based on electricity. For example, a tree is perfectly adapted to its environment, capable of taking energy from the sun, materials from the ground, transform it, and so on. Yet the intelligent mechanism that created trees is not based on neural networks as far as I understand it. In this mechanism, the data is stored in DNA, and DNA can be rewriten at each new generation. It is a completely different (and slower) approach.

Finally I agree that the emergence of fast intelligence through neural network is incredible, although for me the first impressive advance is the use of the electricity to speed up the information exchange. The arrangements in nodes and edges could follow naturally from the fact that the transmission of electric signals works better through 1D circuits. The second impressive advance is the way the networks are layered. This is critical and very difficult to have an arrangement of edges and nodes that can both be trained and inferred efficiently. Without the proper arrangement, a biological neural network or a computer circuit is much less intelligent.

Finally in the future we could imagine intelligent mechanisms based on quantum mechanics for example. In this case, it would probably be vastly different from nodes and edges, due to the underlying physical constraints that are different in electricity and in quantum mechanics.

tldr: yes nodes and edges seem fundamental in fast intelligence based on electricity, but other very different intelligent mechanism exist in biological organisms, and other very different intelligent mechanisms could still be invented in the future.