Printing the human genome on punched tape

#1

Post by mattbierner » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 12:34 AM UTC

Printing the human genome on punched tape
blog.mattbierner.com

Re: Printing the human genome on punched tape

#2

Post by mattbierner » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 12:39 AM UTC

If you have questions about the technical details of the project, I'd be happy to try answering them. It's been fun to use this retro tech in a really impractical way, and being able to see individual bits of data is neat.

I'll also be live streaming the printing off and on: http://twitch.tv/mattbierner

Re: Printing the human genome on punched tape

#3

Post by kyberias » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 8:15 PM UTC

This is unbelievably wasteful and uninteresting.

Re: Printing the human genome on punched tape

#4

Post by benj111 » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC

"For the past week, I’ve been holed up"

I see what you did there :)

Re: Printing the human genome on punched tape

#5

Post by Tomminn » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

I don't understand why he's not encoding information into the odd labelled columns. It really takes away from the project.

Re: Printing the human genome on punched tape

#6

Post by enriquto » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 9:10 PM UTC

Tomminn wrote: post #5

I don't understand why he's not encoding information into the odd labelled columns. It really takes away from the project.

And using 8 bits to encode 2 is also a very strange choice.

Re: Printing the human genome on punched tape

#7

Post by sxv » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #6

Tomminn wrote: post #5

I don't understand why he's not encoding information into the odd labelled columns. It really takes away from the project.

And using 8 bits to encode 2 is also a very strange choice.

Sure but keep in mind that there is no objective, this is just free expression, or, an art project.

Re: Printing the human genome on punched tape

#8

Post by droithomme » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 9:49 PM UTC

Tomminn wrote: post #5

I don't understand why he's not encoding information into the odd labelled columns. It really takes away from the project.

He wants it to be one base pair per row, and also to express the multi-possibility rows in the source data. So he needs 4 bits per row for that, and he spreads them out rather than bunch up on one side.

Re: Printing the human genome on punched tape

#9

Post by curtis » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 10:11 PM UTC

Seeing the piles of accumulated paper tape does actually illustrate an interesting question: How exactly is 3.2 billion base pairs of DNA folded up in a human cell?

Re: Printing the human genome on punched tape

#10

Post by curtis » Sat, Mar 02, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

curtis wrote: post #9

Seeing the piles of accumulated paper tape does actually illustrate an interesting question: How exactly is 3.2 billion base pairs of DNA folded up in a human cell?

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatin:

> Chromatin is a complex of DNA, RNA, and protein found in eukaryotic cells. Its primary function is packaging very long DNA molecules into a more compact, denser shape, which prevents the strands from becoming tangled and plays important roles in reinforcing the DNA during cell division, preventing DNA damage, and regulating gene expression and DNA replication.

I wonder if it's possible to visualize how Chromatin works from the DNA paper tape?