Re:DNA seen through the eyes of a coder
by timr on Sunday December 15, 2013 @05:56PM
(#6911426)
"DNA is not just a sequence that encodes proteins. We just found out there's a secondary higher level code in it"
So, I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but we didn't "just" find this out. We've known for quite a long time about secondary (and even tertiary!) "codes" in DNA. That HN article was the result of a press-release about something that was interesting, but certainly not earth-shattering new theory. The reason it was in Science was because they did an extremely large-scale test of a whole bunch of different codons on thousands of different gene promoters, and directly quantified the impact of rare codons. That was an impressive way to settle an open debate.
Anyway, it's good to know that there are higher-order interactions encoded in DNA than just DNA -> RNA -> Protein, but you should realize that this is an old/deep area of research. This is pretty much what bioinformatics is about, actually: deducing the higher-order structures in DNA, RNA and proteins.
So, I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but we didn't "just" find this out. We've known for quite a long time about secondary (and even tertiary!) "codes" in DNA. That HN article was the result of a press-release about something that was interesting, but certainly not earth-shattering new theory. The reason it was in Science was because they did an extremely large-scale test of a whole bunch of different codons on thousands of different gene promoters, and directly quantified the impact of rare codons. That was an impressive way to settle an open debate.
Anyway, it's good to know that there are higher-order interactions encoded in DNA than just DNA -> RNA -> Protein, but you should realize that this is an old/deep area of research. This is pretty much what bioinformatics is about, actually: deducing the higher-order structures in DNA, RNA and proteins.