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"To me it seems like RNA is the processor, DNA is the RAM,..." Is there anything resembling a von Neumann machine in the biochemistry, though? Would Turing ma
by fsloth 2y ago
"To me it seems like RNA is the processor, DNA is the RAM,..."
Is there anything resembling a von Neumann machine in the biochemistry, though?
Would Turing machine analogues be more useful?
- tomlue 2y agoEpigenetic modifications, such as methylation, are made to DNA by specific proteins. These modifications alter the transcription process from DNA to RNA, which in turn affects protein expression. This includes the expression of the proteins responsible for epigenetic changes themselves. In essence, the proteins that modify DNA also control the expression of their own building instructions through a feedback loop. I guess that feels a bit like a von neumann machine to me, but I'm not sure the analogy is super helpful.
- WJW 2y agoBoth Turing and Von Neumann machines (and the lambda calculus by Church) were designed to be minimal implementations that were still powerful enough to be provably complete in a mathematical sense. Mother Nature is under no such constraints: she happily constructs massively parallel "computers" with millions of global variables, each being written to by every core. That human minds cannot debug such systems is not Her problem. The only constraint is if it works, and it does.