From owner-biophys@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Sat Nov 11 14:42:18 2000 Return-Path: Received: by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix, from userid 110) id 002E217A90; Sat, 11 Nov 2000 14:42:17 +0000 (GMT) Received: by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix, from userid 6024) id 3941717A88; Sat, 11 Nov 2000 14:42:16 +0000 (GMT) Received: from niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (niobium [193.62.192.41]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 77FE9415D5 for ; Sat, 11 Nov 2000 14:42:10 +0000 (GMT) Received: (from news@localhost) by niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (8.9.3+Sun/8.8.8) id OAA15353 for biophys-list@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk; Sat, 11 Nov 2000 14:42:10 GMT X-Authentication-Warning: niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk: news set sender to using -f From: andreip@bellsouth.net ("Andrei Popescu") X-Newsgroups: bionet.biophysics Subject: RE: DNA versus Roux's experiment Date: 11 Nov 2000 14:42:08 -0000 Organization: BIOSCI/MRC Human Genome Mapping Project Resource Centre Lines: 30 Message-ID: References: <973944737.27722.0.nnrp-13.c2de40bb@news.demon.co.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: niobium.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk 973953729 15350 193.62.192.80 (11 Nov 2000 14:42:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@net.bio.net X-Received: by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix, from userid 6024) id D3B3517A88; Sat, 11 Nov 2000 14:42:07 +0000 (GMT) X-Received: from mail1.bna.bellsouth.net (mail1.bna.bellsouth.net [205.152.150.13]) by mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id 05D06415DC for ; Sat, 11 Nov 2000 14:42:01 +0000 (GMT) X-Received: from andreip (host-209-214-115-118.bna.bellsouth.net [209.214.115.118]) by mail1.bna.bellsouth.net (3.3.5alt/0.75.2) with SMTP id JAA05238 for ; Sat, 11 Nov 2000 09:41:59 -0500 (EST) X-To: X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) X-Importance: Normal X-In-Reply-To: <973944737.27722.0.nnrp-13.c2de40bb@news.demon.co.uk> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 To: biophys@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Sender: owner-biophys@hgmp.mrc.ac.uk Precedence: bulk > Since both DNA molecules and animals, are also bilaterally > symmetric.. this leads to the inevitable conjecture that > there is a complete geometric isomorphism between the DNA > molecule and the zoological body plan. My oppinion is that there is no such isomorphism. The two things are governed by completely different laws. DNA, even large, are molecules, therefore they are quantum objects whereas the body is a macroscopic object. >From the symetry of an atom doesn't necesarily follow the symetry of agregates of atoms, not all symetric atoms form crystals, for example. From the symetry of a crystal doesn't follow the symetry of a planet. From the symetry of a planet doesn't follow the symetry of a galaxy and so on. People try to find relations between unrelated objects all the time and they sometimes succeed, but only rarely these kinds of relations can provide something useful. Which, of course, doesn't mean we should stop trying... The analogy DNA/hologram that Nigel gave is excellent. I think of DNA as a hard disk that containes data. The data is highly fragmented, but not compressed, on the contrary, it contains lots of 0s, like a sparse matrix. And there is no isomorphism between the magnetic crystals that form the magnetic surface of the disk and the information stored ... :-) Andrei Popescu --- .