Re: [DIYbio] Advice for a computer scientist who doesn't understand biology

On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 6:00 PM, Nathan McCorkle <nmz787@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 3:22 PM, William Heath <wgheath@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 3. The biology field and most of the people in the field are not computer
>> scientists and are very shocked to discover that cells are actually hardware
>> (cells) executing programs (dna).
>
> This has been discussed before in-depth, and it really is a vast
> simplification to say DNA is THE program.
>
> See:
> Comparing E. coli to Linux
> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/diybio/TfhBPXFgl4M/discussion

Also, here's another take that I like to refer to.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/diybio/GxRTESzUWUI/b68eQEeluisJ

> I don't think that's entirely DIYbio's fault. Synthetic biology has been
> telling all the programmers that biology is just like programming for almost 10
> years now, if not more. So, there's a lot of hype you have to cut through. But,
> programmers misinterpret this as pessimism instead of fact. I am more
> optimistic than anyone, overly optimistic, wildly optimistic about things,
> which is hilarious when people accuse me of pessimism when pointing out that
> DNA isn't like software programming.
>
> "... there is no source, the bytecode has multiple reentrent abstractions, is
> unstable and has a very low signal to noise ratio, the runtime is
> unbootstrappable, the execution is nondeterministic, it tries to randomly
> integrate and execute code from other computers... multiple reentrant and
> self-modifying abstractions. absolutely everything has subtle side effects."

and:

> > entity that is "hackable"[1] in the same way a computer system is. In fact
>
> Yes, but what -isn't- hackable? Look, my gripe here is that cells are
> really -nothing- like a von neumann machine. They're both nonlinear
> dynamical systems that happen to carry lots of "code" that controls
> their evolution in time. That's the strongest similarity. Cells
> deserve more than crappy metaphors to other kinds of systems. If
> y'all really want to improve how we engineer cells, it's worth taking
> a few years to begin understanding how they really work.
>
> As Bryan pointed out, SynBio suffered for a long time under the
> domination of a naive pack of EE/CS enthusiasts who couldn't pull the
> blinkers from their eyes to see that they weren't operating in the
> same kind of world anymore. My recommendation to DiyBio enthusiasts
> is not to repeat their mistake.

Remember, the future owes you nothing, and it might not look like
anything you imagine except what you can build.

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507

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