dvunkannon
Posts: 1377
Joined: June 2008
|
| Quote (charlie wagner @ Sep. 12 2008,11:49) | | Quote | That is just so much handwaving BS.
The genome (a string of DNA) of any creature is not an automaton. You could argue that a ribosome is an automaton. DNA is a sequence of instructions, but the instructions set in not "Turing complete" because there is no looping construct. There is no way to tell the ribosome to go back thirty codons or forward five.
The ribosomal automaton reading the DNA sequence cannot make any other biochemical machine. It can make linear strings of 20 amino acids. Many drugs are not proteins. Sugars and fats are not proteins. All biochemistry does not equal protein chemistry.
Further, these amino acids are not infinite in variety. They are 20 out of many many more. We can create biochemical machines that use amino acids that no genome codes for, no tRNA transcribes.
The analogy of computers to biology is often overstated. You have done so. |
How do you know that a genome is not an automaton?
|
Because I've read descriptions of the genetic machinery of the cell. The genome is stored information, not the machine that reads the information.
| Quote |
How do you know that a genome cannot make any other biochemical machine? |
Because we know that the product of the ribosome is a linear string of amino acids, and we know that there are other biochemical objects that are not linear strings of amino acids.
| Quote | | How do you know that amino acids are not infinite in variety? |
Because we've counted the amino acids used in protein synthesis, there are 20. We know others, but protein chemistry only uses 20. There are only 64 slots in the code table of the gemone, some amino acids are specified more than once.
| Quote | | How do you know that biological processes are not analogous to our concept of computers? |
No analogy is perfect. The instructon set of the genome is not Turing complete.
Yup, that article is full of it. Full of speculation. But note that no genome has a "computational gene", this is a human invention (yet to be proved) that leverages existing natural functions, but adds things that have never existed in a natural genome.
--------------
I’m referring to evolution, not changes in allele frequencies. - Cornelius Hunter
I’m not an evolutionist, I’m a change in allele frequentist! - Nakashima
|
