* * * * *
                                        
             “It's all fun and games until your code gets cancer.”
                                        
> The genome is littered with old copies of genes and experiments that went
> wrong somewhere in the recent past—say, the last half a million years. This
> code is there but inactive. These are called the “pseudo genes”.
> 
> Furthermore, 97% of your DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) is commented out. DNA
> is linear and read from start to end. The parts that should not be decoded
> are marked very clearly, much like C comments. The 3% that is used directly
> form the so called “exons”. The comments, that come “inbetween” are called
> “introns”.
> 
> These comments are fascinating in their own right. Like C comments they
> have a start marker, like /*, and a stop marker, like */. But they have
> some more structure. Remember that DNA is like a tape—the comments need to
> be snipped out physically! The start of a comment is almost always
> indicated by the letters “GC”, which thus corresponds to /*, the end is
> signalled by “AG”, which is then like */.
> 

Via Reddit [1], “DNA seen through the eyes of a coder [2]”

It's an interesting view of DNA, as seen through the eyes of a programmer.

[1] http://programming.reddit.com/info/64dlz/comments/
[2] http://ds9a.nl/amazing-dna/index.html

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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