An interesting article in SciTechDaily reports on a new study describing “a biological transistor that is made from genetic material (DNA and RNA) in place of gears or electrons.” From the article,
When Charles Babbage prototyped the first computing machine in the 19th century, he imagined using mechanical gears and latches to control information. ENIAC, the first modern computer developed in the 1940s, used vacuum tubes and electricity. Today, computers use transistors made from highly engineered semiconducting materials to carry out their logical operations.
And now a team of Stanford University bioengineers has taken computing beyond mechanics and electronics into the living realm of biology. In a paper published March 28 in Science, the team details a biological transistor made from genetic material — DNA and RNA — in place of gears or electrons. The team calls its biological transistor the “transcriptor.”
semi related notes:
As well, The Ribosome of the cell is found to be very similar to a CPU in a electronic computer:
Check out this video of Endy explaining how transcriptor logic gates function:
Transcriptors & Boolean Integrase Logic (BIL) gates, explained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahYZBeP_r5U
video via Huffpo
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....81753.html
““BIL gates”” . . . uh oh . . .
Interesting quote on this from Huffpo:
As to some of Wyss Institute’s previous work in this area:
What is the promise for society if DNA based computing is able to be brought to maturity?
Here is another impressive breakthrough from the Wyss Institute:
BA, how do future DNA computers compare with quantum computers in their possible speed, memory, etc.? It may be that if quantum computers are perfected we may skip the DNA computer step, though DNA computers will still have functions like being able to be inserted into the human body which quantum computers may not. Would love to hear your thoughts.
billmaz, from what little I know, I think we are far closer to a DNA based ‘classical’ computer than we are to a quantum computer,,
notes:
But who knows billmaz, some progress is being made in overcoming decoherence, so quantum computation may be on the verge of a breakthrough that will allow it to slingshot past the progress of ‘classical’ DNA computers:
it seems that if the researchers in quantum computation would have been looking to DNA and proteins for some hints as to overcoming the decoherence problem that might have overcome these technical difficulties much quicker:
I consider the following to be a clear example of ‘quantum computation’ in the cell:
Of note: DNA repair machines ‘Fixing every pothole in America before the next rush hour’ is analogous to the traveling salesman problem and ‘Traveling salesman problems’ are notorious for keeping supercomputers busy for days.
Supplemental notes:
Thus since it seems fairly obvious that there is not a material CPU (central processing unit) in the DNA, or in the cell, busily computing answers to this monster logistic problem, in a purely ‘classical’ fashion, then it seems readily apparent that this monster ‘traveling salesman problem’, for DNA repair, must somehow be computed by ‘non-local’ quantum computation within the cell and/or within DNA;
This could help confirm or refute the claim that the differences obseved are not due to arrival different genes, but due to the way the same ole genes are used differently (Shubin “Your Inner Fish”).
If what type of organism develops just depends on what gets turned on when and it what amounts, then this is one step in testing that claim.
This is pretty exciting stuff if you think about it.
Related note:
semi related note to the resurrection of Jesus:
Of interest for hard core atheists who don’t want to believe any of this is possible:
It should also be noted: All foreign, non-Judeo-Christian culture, NDE studies I have looked at have a extreme rarity of encounters with ‘The Being Of Light’ and tend to be very unpleasant NDE’s save for the few pleasant children’s NDEs of those cultures that I’ve seen (It seems there is indeed an ‘age of accountability’). The following study was shocking for what was found in some non-Judeo-Christian NDE’s:
OT: audio – John Stonestreet interviews Dr. Gary Habermas, renowned apologist for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, about the overwhelming evidence proclaiming “He has risen!”
http://www.breakpoint.org/feat.....y/15/21849
Cells were computing long before humans arrived on the scene.
But computers were only selling after humans arrived. 🙂
You know that weird discovery by the hired snake-wrangler in the film series, The Bible, of some forty odd snakes near the foot of Christ’s cross, I think the day they were to shoot the crucifixion scene*, Philip, when he’d been used to only finding three or four a day?
I think its resonance is with the bronze serpent, which was fashioned and then raised, in order to spare the Hebrew people in the desert from deadly snake-bites; the bronze serpent being symbolic of Christ on the cross made sin for our sakes. Chemist shops in the UK use it as their therapeutic insignia.
What would we do without you educated ‘nuts’ on here, Mung and Joe!
I was only thinking the other day, before I gave up on watching the box all together, how much I missed the catch- phrases that were in vogue in TV films, one after another during the eighties.
At one time, there was hardly a gum-shoe instalment, in which some hard-bitten character didn’t ask, ‘What are you? Some kinda nut?!’
For ‘educated nuts’, read, ‘cerebral nuts’. And yes, I need to check my posts, if I must send them!
I read somewhere that insects of some kind, maybe bees, use pheromone markings, and airports biomimic their methodology (without the use of pheromones, I take it), in order to optimise the logistics of aircraft landing and take-off schedules, e.g. minimising the number of aircraft circling while waiting to land, and the time they need to spend circling.
Having this incredibly scientifically-oriented mind of mine, that’s got me trying to remember what, if anything they use instead of pheromones. It’s tempting to think it might be eagles’ pheromones, but I don’t think so. I think they bypassed the pheromone thang.