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Still seems like everyone is making attempts to understand genetics from a bottom-up approach. It doesn't make much sense to me to do so since there's no framew

by spynxic 10y ago

Still seems like everyone is making attempts to understand genetics from a bottom-up approach. It doesn't make much sense to me to do so since there's no framework to talk about what's being produced by the DNA (i.e. protein functions) It's similar to giving someone a random series of numbers and asking them to continue it. The solution would be to try to understand the RNG instead of blindly pattern matching.

jonlucc 10y ago
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your frustration, but we can already produce many fully functional proteins (often in non-human cells) from their genes. It would be a magnificent feat to be able to know and produce an entire organism (familiar, not novel) from the letters on the page. Arguably, that's an important step to being able to do the kinds of designer genetics that people seem to be very interested in for making sure their kids are born without certain disease alleles.
toufka 10y ago
You are correct. There are two different 'componentry' arguments here hiding in the question. The first is essentially, how many separable ingredients does it require to make a person? This speaks nothing to how often, rarely, or combinatorially those ingredients are used. The answer seems to be a fairly consistent order of magnitude of ~10k unique protein components for a modern organism. With some retaining a lot of old or duplicated code that's been commented out, 'just in case'. The second (your point) seems even more valid. Many of those individual components are themselves just mix-'n'-matched of separable protein domains. And in fact the entire olfactory system generates thousands of separably functional proteins from a single 'gene' by mixing and matching compatibly functional protein domains. And on this count it's much more difficult to form an answer for the required components in a person. Especially since the DNA itself is not of much help when you're regexing for similar protein domains. If a production car contains 1,000,000 components to assemble, coming from 50,000 unique part numbers, with each designed part being built by extending/mixing-matching 2000 unique CAD files, using only 30 unique alloys/materials, how many 'components' does it take to make the car? The better question, exactly, is how many unique functions must the car accomplish in order to be a car. There is still the issue of scale in that, is 'being attached' as valid of a function as 'cooling the engine' or 'moving forward'. At least the counting of components can be done given today's understanding of genetics.

by spynxic 10y ago

jonlucc 10y ago

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your frustration, but we can already produce many fully functional proteins (often in non-human cells) from their genes. It would be a magnificent feat to be able to know and produce an entire organism (familiar, not novel) from the letters on the page. Arguably, that's an important step to being able to do the kinds of designer genetics that people seem to be very interested in for making sure their kids are born without certain disease alleles.

toufka 10y ago

You are correct. There are two different 'componentry' arguments here hiding in the question. The first is essentially, how many separable ingredients does it require to make a person? This speaks nothing to how often, rarely, or combinatorially those ingredients are used. The answer seems to be a fairly consistent order of magnitude of ~10k unique protein components for a modern organism. With some retaining a lot of old or duplicated code that's been commented out, 'just in case'. The second (your point) seems even more valid. Many of those individual components are themselves just mix-'n'-matched of separable protein domains. And in fact the entire olfactory system generates thousands of separably functional proteins from a single 'gene' by mixing and matching compatibly functional protein domains. And on this count it's much more difficult to form an answer for the required components in a person. Especially since the DNA itself is not of much help when you're regexing for similar protein domains. If a production car contains 1,000,000 components to assemble, coming from 50,000 unique part numbers, with each designed part being built by extending/mixing-matching 2000 unique CAD files, using only 30 unique alloys/materials, how many 'components' does it take to make the car? The better question, exactly, is how many unique functions must the car accomplish in order to be a car. There is still the issue of scale in that, is 'being attached' as valid of a function as 'cooling the engine' or 'moving forward'. At least the counting of components can be done given today's understanding of genetics.