Does DNA contain digital information?

[CoxRox]

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?

[Autumnlicious]

Yes, in that there are no intermediate states between those four bases, one can refer to DNA as a digital system by definition.

dig·it·al/ˈdijitl/
Adjective: Relating to or using signals or information represented by discrete values (digits) of a physical quantity, such as voltage or magnetic polarization, to represent arithmetic numbers or approximations to numbers from a continuum of logical expressions and variables: "digital TV".

[Tiberius]

Digital systems use discrete values (i.e. 0 or 1) rather than continuous signals (i.e. 0.0 to 1.0 inclusive) in order to transmit information. So in that case, DNA having only 4 possible bases can be described as a digital code, but then so could practically anything that can be meaningfully translated into discrete values.

I don't think there is anything special about it; if you are trying to infer that because it is a digital code it must come from intelligence. Digital codes are an invention of man, yes, but they are merely a way of interpreting certain types of data.

[Skeptic]

You could just as easily say that DNA contains hexidecimal information.

[phantomsnipa]

Digital systems use discrete values (i.e. 0 or 1) rather than continuous signals (i.e. 0.0 to 1.0 inclusive) in order to transmit information. So in that case, DNA having only 4 possible bases can be described as a digital code, but then so could practically anything that can be meaningfully translated into discrete values.

I don't think there is anything special about it; if you are trying to infer that because it is a digital code it must come from intelligence. Digital codes are an invention of man, yes, but they are merely a way of interpreting certain types of data.

what he said.

[Anomalocaris]

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.

[theVOID]

Everything is digital in the sense that all changes in all systems are quantifiable, analog is an illusion of scale, waves illustrated as curves on a graph would more accurately be illustrated as a series of points each an equal distance apart.

[Rayaan]

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A passionate young couple can make love several times a night, every night. Nature does not care about recreational sex; the reason that men and women romanticize about each other and are attracted and fall in love, is so that they will be fooled into having children, even if they think they are trying to avoid conception! They’re actually trying very hard to transmit information from the male to the female. Every time a man ejaculates inside a woman he loves, an enormous number of sperm cells, each with half the DNA software for a complete individual, try to fertilize an egg.

Jacob Schwartz once surprised a computer science class by calculating the bandwidth of human sexual intercourse, the rate of information transmission achieved in human love-making. I’m too much of a theoretician to care about the exact answer, which anyway depends on details like how you measure the amount of time that’s involved, but his class was impressed that the bandwidth that’s achieved is quite respectable!

What is this software like? It isn’t written in 0/1 binary like computer software. Instead DNA is written in a 4-letter alphabet, the 4 bases that can be each rung of the twisted double-helix ladder that is a DNA molecule.Adenine, A, thymine, T, guanine, G, and cytosine, C, are those four letters. Individual genes, which code for a single protein, are kilobases of information. And an entire human genome is measured in gigabases, so that’s sort of like gigabytes of computer software.

Each cell in the body has the same DNA software, the complete genome, but depending on the kind of tissue or the organ that it’s in, it runs different portions of this software, while using many basic subroutines that are common to all cells.

And this software is highly conservative, much of it is quite ancient: Many common subroutines are shared among fruitflies, invertebrates, mice and humans, so they have to have originated in an ancient common ancestor. In fact, there is surprisingly little difference between a chimp and a human, or even between a mouse and human.

We are not that unique; Nature likes to re-use good ideas. Instead of starting afresh each time, Nature “solves” new problems by patching—that is, slightly modifying or mutating—the solutions to old problems, as the need arises. Nature is a cobbler, a tinkerer. It’s much too much work, it’s much too expensive, to start over again each time. Our DNA software accumulates by accretion, it’s a beautiful patch-work quilt! And our DNA software also includes all those frozen accidents, those mutations due to DNA copying errors or ionizing radiation, which is a possible pathway for quantum uncertainty to be incorporated in the evolutionary record. In a sense this is an amplification mechanism, one that magnifies quantum uncertainty into an effect that is macroscopically visible.

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In that sense, one could also think of DNA as a software for life.

The passages are taken from a book entitled "Meta Math!: The Quest for Omega," by Gregory Chaitin, in which the author talks algorithmic information theory and also about life and evolution according to a computational view of the universe. This is a topic which falls under the study of digital philosophy which, in essence, views that all mental and physical activities are digitized information processing, and likewise, this is also true for the cells and DNA in our bodies because they process information in a systematic manner.

Afterall, the universe itself might be a giant quantum computer: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Black...puters.pdf

[The Grand Nudger]

The Arabic contribution to math and science is immense and puzzling, considering the situation on the ground. You're a bit of the same to me Rayaan. lol.

[KichigaiNeko]

The Arabic contribution to math and science is immense and puzzling, considering the situation on the ground. You're a bit of the same to me Rayaan. lol.

That was BM Rhythm (Before Mohammad) then the whole intelligentsia got murdered and what was left is still struggling to catch up. lol