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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

#91

Post by dkural »

Agathos wrote: post #37
dl8 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My first thought on seeing the headline was, "What? Only 2?" Off the top of my head I can think of: 1. Amino acid coding 2. Transcription factor binding and transcriptional regulation 3. Post-transcriptional regulation and RNA degradation 4. Intron/Exon Splice sites 5. Chromosome structure and methylation 6. Origins of replication All of these have been shown to be controlled at least in part by the DNA's sequence. T…

In this paper I explore 1,3,4,and 6 (3 = microRNA binding): http://genomebiology.com/content/10/11/R133

Re: Scientists discover second code hiding in DNA

#92

Post by chmike »

mseepgood wrote: post #88

64 letter alphabet? Base64 encoded?

A protein is a chain of amino acids. There are 21 different amino acids. The alphabet of proteins is made of 21 different letters.

DNA strings are sequence of Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (DNA). There are only 4 of them named A, T, C, G. The alphabet of DNA is thus made of 4 letters.

One needs at least 3 DNA letters to encode one of the 21 amino acids. These 3 DNA letters are called codon. But with 3 DNA letters there exist 4^3 = 64 different codons. This is similar to a Base64 encoding just by the number of letters in the codon alphabet.

Since 64 is much more than 21, many different codons encode the same amino acid. This provides a liberty degree which is apparently used to encode something else. As suggested by this research result, the secondary encoding would sort of encode the predicate specifying when and maybe how the DNA sequence encoding a protein should be decoded.

Re: Scientists discover second code hiding in DNA

#93

Post by coldtea »

So, there was a second code hiding in DNA, with different types of instructions, and those scientists discovered it.

That's nice, that's how science progresses.

Now, let's go to how business works. What about all those "scientists" (nay, engineers doing whatever for a payroll) and all those corporations, cocky and convinced that they had all the knowledge they needed, working as amateur magicians with DNA to create synthetic food, organs, new drugs, etc?

They essentially said "fuck" to a better and timely scientific understanding, in order to greedily rush to market some half baked results -- and consequences (medical or otherwise) be damned.

Re: Scientists discover second code hiding in DNA

#94

Post by coldtea »

asveikau wrote: post #83
biot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of having a debate between the pot and kettle, perhaps you'd listen to the stove? http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html "The most dangerous form of stupid comment is not the long but mistaken argument, but the dumb joke. [...] Bad comments are like kudzu: they take over rapidly. Comments have much more effect on new comments than submissions have on new submissions. If someone submits a lame article, the…

Right, because what constitutes a "dumb joke" can be universally agreed upon.

No, because any joke is a "dumb joke" in the context of a HN discussion. There's no debate about the smartness of them.

The "dumb" part is about it being a joke, as opposed to a serious contribution, argument or commentary. Not about the joke's quality as a joke. That is, even if you're Woody Allen, HN does not want you to write jokes in here -- and especially one liners without any other content.

Re: Scientists discover second code hiding in DNA

#100

Post by mtdewcmu »

coldtea wrote: post #94
asveikau wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, because what constitutes a "dumb joke" can be universally agreed upon.

No, because any joke is a "dumb joke" in the context of a HN discussion. There's no debate about the smartness of them. The "dumb" part is about it being a joke, as opposed to a serious contribution, argument or commentary. Not about the joke's quality as a joke. That is, even if you're Woody Allen, HN does not want you to write jokes in here -- and especially one liners without any other content.

>> HN does not want you to write jokes in here -- and especially one liners without any other content.

But humor is insight, and brevity is the soul of wit. I saw it as commentary on the headline itself, which was ambiguous and vague. I thought it meant scientists had found an easter egg or the Enigma code hidden in DNA.

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