RE: How a Boy From an Indian Village Broke the Code of Life and Won the Nobel Prize
This was really fun - and leaves me with two observations:
I often think about the immense waste of potential squandered by humanities failure to evenly distribute wealth, and the trappings of wealth, across our species. Poverty, social and cultural ostracism, and the limited education that often accompanies such things, have kept countless amazing people from realizing their potential for the overall benefit of our species. It's tragic and absurd.
It's amazing to me that, if I'm understanding correctly, the core problem of "DNA to RNA to Proteins" is essentially cryptographic in nature. I guess sort of obvious - re: referring to your DNA as your "genetic code" - but readig this really laid the cryptographic puzzle bare for me.
With a key readily available now, I can even imagine a future where CRISPR like technology allows state intelligence agencies to send codes messages in the form of crafted DNA strands. In theory you could send a ton of information that way.
Absolutely right.
Lots of problems in biology were, in a sense, essentially math problems. Probably the same is true for much of science. ... I remember when I first learned about junk DNA, I immediately thought up a sci fi story (which I never wrote, it remained an idea, that doubtless many others by now must've dreamed up) about how humans were in fact a coded message (meant for some aliens perhaps), with a tiny bit of the message-DNA coding for an actual living organism whose real purpose is to preserve the message - hence species propagation to copy the message, instincts to avoid situations that will destroy the message, etc. The message can only be decoded by those who hold the key to the code. So, in essence, a fancy USB stick with legs! .... Well, it doesn't have to be realistic, it's just a story! And today we learn more and more that 'junk' DNA isn't just so much junk, it fulfills certain functions, and biologists don't even call it that most of the time, they call it noncoding DNA.
Appreciate you reading and commenting!
That's a fabulous idea! I don't know if it's been written yet, but if you're not gonna write anything about I would love to - it's jusg an awesome premise!
No problem! I'd love to see what you'd do with it! There's so much on my plate, and so many stories that I'd need to write before this one got its turn, that I'll probably postpone it indefinitely, so sure have a go!