3 ms·
Wouldn't RNA be the RAM and DNA be long term storage? Most of the work and "decision making" - at least in current organisms - is done by proteins.
by dtech 2y ago
Wouldn't RNA be the RAM and DNA be long term storage? Most of the work and "decision making" - at least in current organisms - is done by proteins.
- akira2501 2y agoThere are many different types of RNA with different purposes. They all act in concert to produce proteins. mRNA encodes proteins, tRNA brings the proteins into transcription, rRNA actually acts as a protein itself to help drive this machine. DNA is environmentally sensitive and it can be altered. Your entire genome is not being produced all the time. Different proteins are copied based upon the conformal structure of DNA which changes based upon the cellular environment. The entire structure is copied often and no one particular set of DNA in your body is "the original." It has aspects of long term storage but then it's utilized in a way that long term storage almost never is. And all cells get their own copy which may be unique in several ways. So RAM seems like a better metaphor to me.
- jhedwards 2y agoBut aren't alterations confined to the epigenetic proteins found in chromatin? I may be mistaken but I thought the DNA itself stays the same while the epigenetic annotations change dynamically.
- acchow 2y agoGiven the billions of years of compression involved, these structures could occupy any number of latent spaces with all sorts of different meaning.
- kkoncevicius 2y agoA long term storage that can also be used as a trap wire to catch pathogens. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrophil_extracellular_traps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrophil_extracellular_traps