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Scientists discover second code hiding in DNA

washington.edu

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Re: Scientists discover second code hiding in DNA

#11

Post by RokStdy »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #4
RokStdy wrote: post #2

The second code is: Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A

Comments like this encourage me to write more quality posts so I can get downvote rights. Sorry.

I figured I might get downvoted, but when I read the headline the konami code stuck in my head and I couldn't resist. It made me laugh, and I thought it might make others laugh. Which to me has (a little) value.

But now, you are pot and I am kettle (or vice versa). Your comment adds no value or, I'd argue less value, because at least I was trying to be funny.

Re: Scientists discover second code hiding in DNA

#12

Post by dl8 »

bede wrote: post #9

TL;DR for biologists: synonymous codon variation is heavily constrained by the need to maintain transcription factor binding motifs. While I found the article very interesting as a new postgraduate student, it seems like such a straightforward deduction that I find it difficult to believe no one has ever put it into words until now.

After talking to someone who knows quite a bit about this stuff, apparently most people in the genomics/bioinformatics community kinda already knew about this, just that the researchers who wrote the paper were the first one to officially categorize them.

Re: Scientists discover second code hiding in DNA

#13

Post by tokenadult »

It's a university press release.[1] I'm sending the link to the published paper from Science kindly shared in an earlier comment here to some geneticists I know locally, who have just been in a seminar together this afternoon, I'm pretty sure. The editors of Science evidently agreed that there is something interesting here, but they have been wrong before.[2]

[1] http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174

[2] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

https://www.sciencenews.org/node/5635

http://www.nature.com/news/arsenic-life-bacterium-prefers-ph...

AFTER EDIT: I heard back from one of my local geneticist friends, a mathematician turned psychologist by higher education who largely does statistical analysis as part of a team of researchers on behavior genetics. He writes, from the perspective of behavior genetics research, "That is fascinating, but if duons are also tagged by SNPs, and especially if they are in the exomic DNA, we've already been studying them and finding very little. In other words, this is huge for molecular genetics and physiology, but I'm not so sure it changes what we do in genotype-phenotype association research." So I take that to say that this could be quite a big deal for molecular genetics and physiology, if this finding is confirmed in follow-up research.

Re: Scientists discover second code hiding in DNA

#14

Post by daemonk »

bede wrote: post #9

TL;DR for biologists: synonymous codon variation is heavily constrained by the need to maintain transcription factor binding motifs. While I found the article very interesting as a new postgraduate student, it seems like such a straightforward deduction that I find it difficult to believe no one has ever put it into words until now.

Actually I didn't know exonic TF binding was even significant enough to put synonymous codon variation under constraint. I've always assumed it was some sort of metabolic constraint, as in more efficient production of certain tRNAs putting a constraint on codon usage.

Re: Scientists discover second code hiding in DNA

#15

Post by contingencies »

dl8 wrote: post #12
bede wrote: post #9

TL;DR for biologists: synonymous codon variation is heavily constrained by the need to maintain transcription factor binding motifs. While I found the article very interesting as a new postgraduate student, it seems like such a straightforward deduction that I find it difficult to believe no one has ever put it into words until now.

After talking to someone who knows quite a bit about this stuff, apparently most people in the genomics/bioinformatics community kinda already knew about this, just that the researchers who wrote the paper were the first one to officially categorize them.

Does this affect assumptions made within genetic engineering of agricultural crops?

Re: Scientists discover second code hiding in DNA

#16

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

It looks like there is software in DNA, not just firmware. We are just starting to understand that gene expression is very important too, code that express(is executed) or not based on the environment, and that junk DNA is probably "not understood code" .

Re: Scientists discover second code hiding in DNA

#17

Post by bede »

dl8 wrote: post #12
bede wrote: post #9

TL;DR for biologists: synonymous codon variation is heavily constrained by the need to maintain transcription factor binding motifs. While I found the article very interesting as a new postgraduate student, it seems like such a straightforward deduction that I find it difficult to believe no one has ever put it into words until now.

After talking to someone who knows quite a bit about this stuff, apparently most people in the genomics/bioinformatics community kinda already knew about this, just that the researchers who wrote the paper were the first one to officially categorize them.

Agreed. The finding is hardly surprising, but this paper appears to formalise things very nicely.

Re: Scientists discover second code hiding in DNA

#20

Post by outworlder »

RokStdy wrote: post #11
AnthonBerg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like this encourage me to write more quality posts so I can get downvote rights. Sorry.

I figured I might get downvoted, but when I read the headline the konami code stuck in my head and I couldn't resist. It made me laugh, and I thought it might make others laugh. Which to me has (a little) value. But now, you are pot and I am kettle (or vice versa). Your comment adds no value or, I'd argue less value, because at least I was trying to be funny.

You should delete you comment while you still have some karma left.
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