News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:DNA seen through the eyes of a coder by dekhn on Monday December 16, 2013 @12:17PM (#6916171)
Yeah, I worked on hidden markov models with David Haussler 20 years ago. HMMs are really a massive simplification of the underlying process of evolution, of course (I think that's what you're trying to say).

I'm not defending the original poster's use of analogy between introns and comments. Those are naive, simple analogies.

What I am responding to is your categorical statement that there are no legitimate analogies between CS and biology, and that's patently false.

I'm certainly not claiming - without evidence - that biological systems perform computation. I strongly suspect that biological systems carry out computation- quorum sensing being a canonical example- and in some sense, any sufficiently complex biological system can be considered an analog computer of some sort, with goal-seeking computational behavior.

One of my interests in some time has been building a digital circuit in DNA; one that can compute, using state, a taylor series approximation of an interesting constant, such as pi, using feedback circuits, error correction, and other "digital" approaches. None of this is impossible, it's just technology. People have already started doing this. That the underlying systems are capable of being turned into computing systems is just an outcome of the fact that biological systems are sufficiently complex that they can be used to instantiate simpler digital computing systems.

Re:DNA seen through the eyes of a coder by stiff on Monday December 16, 2013 @12:30PM (#6916271)
I think it boils down to what you consider an "analogy", is a markov model really an analogy between computer science and biology? I would consider that simply a mathematical concept that finds applications in both Computer Science and Biology, and it isn't even that related to computations or computers, it's just an useful mathematical tool. I don't deny concepts from CS or Mathematics can be applied to biology.

On the other hand, I think there are lots of CS people who apply blindly oversimplistic models to complex biological situations without understanding the biology, and that's what I was trying to protest against.

Re:DNA seen through the eyes of a coder by dekhn on Monday December 16, 2013 @03:43PM (#6917682)
I agree with your last sentence. But you made a categorical/general statement upthread, and I called you on that.