On 24 March 2014 17:41, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 3/23/2014 8:57 PM, LizR wrote: > > *Is* DNA a universal programming language? > > > I'm not sure what a "universal programming language" means. Just 1s and > 0s are enough language. I think you probably mean to ask is whether a cell > is a universal computer with DNA as the program. I don't know if there's > been a formal proof but it almost certainly is. Making a universal > computer is pretty easy. Wolfram's rule 110 produces a universal computer > in one dimension with only two colors and nearest neighbor rules. > > I'm quoting the paper at http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~*chaitin*/*darwin* .pdf
(See section 9) Presumably DNA is a universal programming language, but how sophisticated can mutations be in actual biological organisms? In this connection, note that evo-devo views DNA as software for constructing the embryo, and that the change from single-celled to multicellular organisms is roughly like taking a main program and making it into a subroutine, which is a fairly high-level mutation. Could this be the reason that it took so long|on the order of 109 years|for this to happen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
