Code as an Analogy of DNA?

John @Mercer – And a choreographer?

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Thanks. Are you able to provide a specific example or is there a resource to learn more about this?

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That’s a terrible analogy! :rofl:

I called it chemistry, which is physical, and I see no need to claim it is anything else. What’s the point in calling DNA a digital code if there are no digital operations?

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Perhaps you could call it a digital encoding?

Because it is quaternary ROM? It’s base-4 instead of only binary, which is why it has such massive capacity, and you could as easily call the nucleotides 1, 2, 3 and 4 (← digits :slightly_smiling_face:, or 0, 1, 2 and 3, also digits) as A, C, G and T.

Um, that is not why it has such high capacity. Why would you think that?

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(I’m not insisting on calling it ‘code’.)

Instead of just two binary ‘states’ each ‘character’ has four?

The capacity is far more determined by the length of the genome, and the degree of redundancy, not the 2 vs 4 base.

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Sure. Try the same amount of information in just binary.

In any case, the fact that it is a storage ‘device’ and has four ‘characters’ legitimizes the digital ROM analogy.

And since what is stored is ‘digitized’, it is still analogous to code, regardless of the transcription devices, media and final product, be it a CNC machined part or an enzyme.

@DaleCutler everyone should agree that there is an analogy. At question is how far the analogy goes. It certainly is not a perfect analogy. Where does analogy end? That is the real issue here.

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There are physical determinants of why, say, CAG codes for glutamine. That physical reason is found in the aminoacyl-tRNA-synthetase enzyme, which is responsible for coupling the tRNA molecule with it’s cognate amino acid.
You can read about this here Section 29.2 Aminoacyl-Transfer RNA Synthetases Read the Genetic Code

What determines that CAG codes for glutamine is the aminoacyl-tRNA-synthetase enzyme. The shape of glutamine fits into a binding pocket in the aaRS enzyme, and the anticodon of tRNA-glu does the same. So the chemical and physical bridge between CAG and glutamine is the aaRS enzyme.

Of course, this just proves how the current emplementation of the code does not involve any abstraction, which does not show how the mapping of codons to amino acids arose in the first place.

It is possible the first associations between amino acids and codons were essentially due to chance ( some codon would have to encode some amino acid however translation arose), or there could be some sort of biochemical association between amino acids and their codons, or anti-codons, that biased the process of code evolution towards the associations we see today (interestingly, there is some evidence for such a bias, as codons and/or anti codons have been shown to be statistically overrepresented in amino acid binding pockets of RNAs). Whether that ultimately is what drove the current mapping of the genetic code isn’t known (there are articles on what is known as the “stereochemical basis of the genetic code”, but they’re still subject to a lot of debate and dispute), but again that doesn’t matter.

The fact that the mapping today has a direct physical and chemical basis in the structural interactions between aaRS enzymes, their cognate amino acids, and the tRNA molecule’s anticodon, disproves the claim that the code has any abstraction and thus constitutes a code in that sense of the word.

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I claimed no abstraction. Fully automated equipment could pick up a component, measure and digitize it and store it indefinitely. It could then be triggered by whatever means to reproduce it. No abstraction required. An outsider looking in, my ET, for instance, would say in his alien tongue that the information about the part was encoded and stored. Similarly, molecular biology.

No worries, my response was not meant for you. I have edited my post.

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It depends on how many legs the horse has. :slightly_smiling_face:

A eukaryotic cell is pretty well analogus to a fully automated factory. I’m not counting legs.

It is also very different. I can agree with and enumerate many of the similarities. Can you enumerate the differences?

Well, let’s see. Cells don’t have a lot of machined parts. Am I okay so far?:slightly_smiling_face:

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