Timeline for Why didn't a concept like "pointers" in Computer Science evolve in the genome?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
11 events
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| Apr 12, 2015 at 10:13 | comment | added | Ankur Chakravarthy | Very important to be absolutely clear what "functional" means. The ENCODE estimate of 80% is based on a definition of functional that basically = "binds to something". Whether these have phenotypic consequences or not does not follow from just that fundamental property. | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 0:22 | comment | added | Resonating | The most generous papers have pegged maybe 80% of the human genome as functional. The average estimate is more like 15% even on the generous side. I gave a bit of a margin because much is not known, but there are ~at least~ 800 million bases that do nothing at all. I'm comfortable with my estimate given what is currently known. | |
| Apr 12, 2015 at 0:17 | comment | added | MattDMo | @Resonating "50% of your genome doesn't do anything at all" is not necessarily true. A large portion of our genome does not have any currently-known function, but that is completely different from saying it has no function whatsoever. | |
| Apr 11, 2015 at 17:54 | comment | added | Resonating | There's not much point in conserving space when at least 50% of your genome doesn't do anything at all. To use a computer science analogy: Disk is cheap. (and all processing is parallel so even I/O isn't a deal) | |
| Apr 11, 2015 at 7:32 | comment | added | user4779 | In the question you'll note I asked why a concept "like" pointers "didn't evolve". In this case of "like" the "object" being pointed would be a LINE. Putting semantics aside, I was curious why heavy extended chains of repeating sequences of carbon atoms would be evolutionarily beneficial when those same repeating chains could be just created once, and then activated as needed. Interestingly in the post you reference, you yourself state it's not the physical implementation, but the underlying concept that is important. It was a question regarding concept, as mentioned in the title. | |
| Apr 11, 2015 at 7:22 | vote | accept | user4779 | ||
| Apr 11, 2015 at 7:10 | review | Close votes | |||
| Apr 11, 2015 at 16:03 | |||||
| Apr 11, 2015 at 6:51 | comment | added | WYSIWYG | Are you sure about what pointer exactly does? As far as my knowledge goes, a pointer stores the address of an object in the RAM. I don't think your analogy is correct. And for function calls: Leave pointers to functions; there are no true equivalents of function calls in biological systems (see this post). It is imperative to understand both the subjects to a basic level before making analogies. | |
| Apr 11, 2015 at 6:32 | answer | added | March Ho | timeline score: 8 | |
| Apr 11, 2015 at 6:19 | review | First posts | |||
| Apr 11, 2015 at 6:25 | |||||
| Apr 11, 2015 at 6:15 | history | asked | user4779 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |