Re: "Algorithms" in Molecular Biology?
- From: dkomo <dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 23:47:42 -0400 (EDT)
dougwedel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Many scientists have talked about the need to start thinking about molecular
biology in terms of algorithms (I first encountered this from Sydney Brenner
in Horace Freeland Judson's "Eighth Day of Creation" -- and that was more
than a quarter of a century ago).
What we are finding about the way genes actually work, such as the workings
of the genes of immunology, reek of algorithmic characteristics. The
different genetic cassettes line up in the gene text itself like so many
sections of a switch statement in a program module.
Yet I wonder: do serious biologists talk in terms of "algorithms"? Can
anyone direct me to such a discussion? And if not, why not?
I've run across three new books exploring the idea that the whole
*universe* is an algorithm in execution. If the whole universe is, then
I'd guess molecular biology is as well.
Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining
Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes by Charles
Seife (Hardcover - Feb 2, 2006)
Programming the Universe : A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes On the
Cosmos by Seth Lloyd (Hardcover - Mar 14, 2006)
Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul : What Gnarly Computation Taught Me
About Ultimate Reality, the Meaning of Life, and How to Be Happy by Rudy
Rucker (Hardcover - Oct 10, 2005)
--dkomo@xxxxxxxx
From Publishers Weekly
Lloyd, a professor at MIT, works in the vanguard of research in quantum
computing: using the quantum mechanical properties of atoms as a
computer. He contends that the universe itself is one big quantum
computer producing what we see around us, and ourselves, as it runs a
cosmic program. According to Lloyd, once we understand the laws of
physics completely, we will be able to use small-scale quantum computing
to understand the universe completely as well. In his scenario, the
universe is processing information.
.
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- "Algorithms" in Molecular Biology?
- From: dougwedel
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