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Well, scientists announced they can now store data in DNA. One has to wonder if that's how life here got started - "Coded" DNA left on the surface of the petri dish that we call "Earth".
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
modified 17-Feb-15 10:30am.
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Well... if we follow the timeline of bits available backwards from 64 to 32 to 16 to 8... so on, so forth... it was truly binary programming then?
Well... that makes sense... 1 and 0... in a phallic sort of way...
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DNA uses triplets of four possible nucleotides (Adenosine, Cytosine, Guanine, and Thymine) to encode 21 different amino acids. This implies a 6-bit system with some redundancy.
Perhaps DEC's early PDP machines (12-bit PDP-5 & -8, 18-bit PDP-1, 36-bit PDP-7 & -10) were on to something!
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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I think it may be a trinary (+0-) system with significant null states.
The difficult may take time, the impossible a little longer.
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A DNA codon consists of 3 base-4 digits (each digit may be one of A, C, G, or T), giving a total of 4^3 or 64 possible values. I fail to see how you could represent 64 states in trinary without some "forbidden" values.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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You are correct. That's what I get for trying to do complex math in the wee hours of the morning.
Just as an aside, what would our computer math be like if the early computer developers had used three states for a bit instead of two?
The difficult may take time, the impossible a little longer.
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It depends on which ternary notation you mean.
If we used "standard" ternary notation (0, 1, 2), the increased complexity of the circuitry is very likely to make it uneconomical compared with binary notation.
Calculation using balanced ternary (-1, 0, 1) has some advantages, but I question whether the increased complexity of the circuitry would make it more viable than binary. I note that only two models of ternary-based computers were built, both in the Soviet Union. Neither was a wild success.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun[^]
http://www.computer-museum.ru/english/setun.htm[^]
If, however, we were to use ternary logic as representing "no", "maybe", and "yes" (i.e. one value implies that the datum is uncertain), we might have something new. I don't know of attempts to program "fuzzy logic" in ternary, but would be interested in any examples...
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Then it's only a matter of time before the NSA puts spyware into our DNA!!
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Richard Andrew x64 wrote: The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
Miracles by appointment only? 
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Richard Andrew x64 wrote: Then it's only a matter of time before the NSA puts spyware into our DNA!!
The whackjobs are probably thinking that's the whole point of GM food.
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Shame they didn't debug the code first
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: scientists announced they can now store data in DNA.
This is actually, very interesting to me. I will fight the urge to post back funny/not funny comments.
This also sounds a bit scary. 
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I think it may be a trinary (+0-) system with significant null states.
The difficult may take time, the impossible a little longer.
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: announced they can now store data in DNA.
Bah! I've been doing this since I was about 13.
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What did you store there before that time?
Non-data?
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Perhaps they have the proteins needed to write such sequences, but it makes me shiver if they try to use this on a living cell. They would probably use 'Junk DNA' as storage space and then it will probably quickly be seen that some sequences were not evolutionary rubble at all. Hopefully such a massive and undeliberate mutation will not be able to survive.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
This is Javascript. If you put big wheels and a racing stripe on a golf cart, it's still a f***ing golf cart.
"I don't know, extraterrestrial?"
"You mean like from space?"
"No, from Canada."
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CDP1802 wrote: Hopefully such a massive and undeliberate mutation will not be able to survive.
That's very insensitive to the massive and undeliberate mutations out here. Very insensitive, indeed. 
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I've already done that. Twice.
My wife helped.
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Jörgen Andersson wrote: I've already done that.
Best and most true answer of all. I guess you are officially a "Scientist". Probably of the mad variety.  And, by mad, I mean completely lunar.
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Let's just hope that we're not the interstellar equivalent of a paper-tape backup.
Software Zen: delete this;
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If they were aiming at the thirtieth anniversary of this[^], they missed it by about seven months.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Uh-huh. And several months ago a band pledged to release an albumn encoded using it.
At one recent event, a 12 second clip was encoded and the resultant DNA put into a soap suspension. Audience members were then asked to blow bubbles using the soap so that each of them could leave carrying the music on their skin. Gee we humans can be so incredibly self-indulgent. Musical DNA soap, $300,000 lab-'grown' beef burgers, tourist trips into space. ;sigh;
http://www.popsci.com.au/science/band-will-release-album-in-dna,398158[^]
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/music-of-the-spheres[^]
As for the proposition you consider - here's some reading if you're up for it.
Origin and Evolution of DNA and DNA Replication Machineries[^]
Spoiler: DNA (is believed to be and is accepted as being something that) was created here, on earth.
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life." - John Lennon
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DNA encoding is slightly more complicated than a base four system. DNA uses triplets of four possible nucleotides (Adenosine, Cytosine, Guanine, and Thymine) to encode 21 different amino acids. However, the encoding has no frame of reference. That is, encoding can begin again shifted by 1 or 2 nucleotides. Additionally, the encoding is also represented on the reverse complement making a total of 6 frames of reference, and any or all may be valid. In a programmers world, this is like encoding a second (or third) program by shifting the starting op-code by 1 byte and getting another valid program. Even weirder, imagine shifting the start by 2 bytes, then taking the one's complement of the program and reversing the bit-order to get another valid program. We enforce encoding to have a definitive start, but DNA has no such restriction and allows for a much higher information content.
modified 18-Feb-15 13:15pm.
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