RE: Does DNA contain digital information?
August 16, 2011 at 5:40 am
(This post was last modified: August 16, 2011 at 6:11 am by Anomalocaris.)
(August 15, 2011 at 5:34 pm)CoxRox Wrote: I must admit that my knowledge of DNA is very limited and so I'm dependant on the simpler overviews aimed at the layman. Even so, I can get a reasonably good idea of what DNA is and does. Time and again I come across the words 'code' and 'digital information' when describing DNA. Is it correct to view the 4 bases (A,T,G,C) as digital code?
First, It is one way to view how DNA works. It is attractive way because it allows us to visualize how DNA works by analogy with something else which we have been forced to learn by the demands of the popularization of a particular technology - that of digital computers. But it is not the only way to visualize how DNA works by analogy, nor is the analogy to popular notion of digital code perfect. For one thing, a digital code in a computer does not in itself participate in the actual task the code instructs the computer to do. A DNA does. So it is many ways better to view DNA not as a code, but a master template, out of which second generation templates, called Messenger RNA are made. The second generation template is then used to manufacture proteins used in all cell functions. So it's inappropriate to say viewing DNA as a digital code is correct. It is only appropriate to say viewing it this way is adequate for some purposes.
Second, the fact that something can be viewed as a digital code is in no way remarkable. Anything consisting of various combination of arrangements made up of a finite set of components, and is capable of showing emergent properties based on the specific combination of these components, can be regarded as a digital code. Consequently literally anything in the universe can be viewed as a digital code consisting of a finite set of letters. In fact everything can be viewed this way at multiple levels. In daily life, a set of letters consisting of 20 or so elements from the periodic table will do to encode everything you touch. Going deeper we can delve into a digital code consisting of a finite set of letters consisting of protons, neutrons, electrons, messenger particles for electromagnetism, gravity, and strong and weak nuclear forces, encoding all the emergent properties and thing you can probably think of. Going even deeper, you get the point.
So the entire universe is a massive digital code whose digits are a finite set of elementary particles, and all of whose properties are emergent from the combination of these digits.
So of course it should be no major surprise if we too can have all of our physiological properties emergent from arrangement of a finite set of repeating constituents, and therefore be just like the rest of the universe in that we can be viewed as having a digital code controlling our makeup.