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Comment by caeruleus

I don't believe the concept of DNA can be reduced to a sequence of quaternary numerals, which is what gene sequence data would represent. Similar to proteins, DNA forms higher-level structures on top of the primary one [1], and (in a biological context, inside the nucleus) exhibits somewhat self-modifying [2] and self-regulating [3] behavior as well as meta-modification [4]. Analogous to the article, if one defines the language of DNA by its nucleobase sequence, this language can only represent a subset of the world of DNA.

Somewhat related, the way the adaptive immune system works has similarities with some concepts in machine learning. In this process, sections of nuclear DNA serve as randomly initialized weights in precursor cells [5] as well as final weights in memory cells. There's even fine-tuning of the weights. [6]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleic_acid_structure [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transposable_element [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcriptional_regulation [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V(D)J_recombination [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_maturation

parent caeruleus 1 year ago

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