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 Junk DNA might be really, really useful for biocomputing
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Quote:because at some point in the evolutionary past some version of it served our ancestors well.

Plus viruses integrating in it, transposons and repeating sequences overflowing.

Quote:If you go rewriting it, using it to compute, etc, you are disrupting the process of recombination across time, and suddenly tiny little mutations that might otherwise have reactivated something potentially useful or combined it with something we now have making a new useful thing, become lethal.

I guess that "computing" here can go from activating a very simple, very localized scavenging gene package in response to a toxine entering the cell or binding to a receptor to the membrane, to "true" biocomputing, in the OA sense. In the latter case you need a knowledge of the orgainsm nearly perfect, the former is quite similar to what we do now to select recombinanting bacteria, but it would be madness do it on a genome as complex as the human one right now. Too many things that can go wrong.
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RE: Junk DNA might be really, really useful for biocomputing - by Vitto - 12-22-2020, 07:53 AM

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