AI
Friday, November 28, 2003 3:55:40 PM
Now this is a good point. Labs have been focusing on the small set of gene sequences believed to have a functional role and leaving the rest unexamined for the most part. So there is a lot more data to sift through when you include the noncoding material. I certainly won't argue about the sheer quantity.
Even so, the relationship between coding and noncoding DNA must remain one of interpretation for the noncoding DNA to be relevant. Code and data in computer programs exist in a dualistic, mutually supportive role too, in which neither is inferior to the other. If the noncoding DNA isn't playing an active role, it must be playing a passive role: that is, it must be just sitting there and being interpreted by the active or coding DNA the same way data is interpreted by code in computer programs (unless there's a genetic mechanism that hasn't even been discovered yet, of course, in which this "passive" DNA is in fact playing an active role by other means!).
Every computer programmer knows that bugs in programs can arise from flaws in logic/code or from flaws in data. Data must be accessed by code to have an effect, however, so a programmer knows to follow the code to find trouble-causing data. In a similar fashion, assuming an intrepretation mechanism is found whereby coding gene sequences read noncoding gene sequences, scientists will know where to target their efforts. (And to clarify the point about a different mechanism for active "junk" DNA, it would be kind of like having both a PC and a Mac running different programs simultaneously in the genome.)
Ultimately, though, I'm not saying there won't be work involved in doing all the things the genome revolution promises, given this new theory. If it proves correct, doing all these things will in fact be made possible by including the extra data, where many of them may be impossible without the extra data. And impossible is always a lot harder than possible.
Returning to relevance to DNAPrint: If they have been targeting the statistical analyses only at coding gene sequences, and if this theory proves correct, then they too have a much wider field of data to mine for statistical correlations. This doesn't invalidate the work they've done so far; indeed, it opens the possibility of ever-more accurate tests based on vast swaths of data, which our technology is more and more capable of handling with each passing year.
It's all opportunity as far as I'm concerned.
--Nik
Even so, the relationship between coding and noncoding DNA must remain one of interpretation for the noncoding DNA to be relevant. Code and data in computer programs exist in a dualistic, mutually supportive role too, in which neither is inferior to the other. If the noncoding DNA isn't playing an active role, it must be playing a passive role: that is, it must be just sitting there and being interpreted by the active or coding DNA the same way data is interpreted by code in computer programs (unless there's a genetic mechanism that hasn't even been discovered yet, of course, in which this "passive" DNA is in fact playing an active role by other means!).
Every computer programmer knows that bugs in programs can arise from flaws in logic/code or from flaws in data. Data must be accessed by code to have an effect, however, so a programmer knows to follow the code to find trouble-causing data. In a similar fashion, assuming an intrepretation mechanism is found whereby coding gene sequences read noncoding gene sequences, scientists will know where to target their efforts. (And to clarify the point about a different mechanism for active "junk" DNA, it would be kind of like having both a PC and a Mac running different programs simultaneously in the genome.)
Ultimately, though, I'm not saying there won't be work involved in doing all the things the genome revolution promises, given this new theory. If it proves correct, doing all these things will in fact be made possible by including the extra data, where many of them may be impossible without the extra data. And impossible is always a lot harder than possible.
Returning to relevance to DNAPrint: If they have been targeting the statistical analyses only at coding gene sequences, and if this theory proves correct, then they too have a much wider field of data to mine for statistical correlations. This doesn't invalidate the work they've done so far; indeed, it opens the possibility of ever-more accurate tests based on vast swaths of data, which our technology is more and more capable of handling with each passing year.
It's all opportunity as far as I'm concerned.
--Nik
