Is there anything to be gained by viewing the DNA code as a quaternary or base-4 numeral system?

Question

Like the quaternary or base-4 numeral system, the DNA code consists of a system of 4 basic symbols. Is anything to be gained from the comparison?

Answer 1

Yes. You realize that it's a data storage medium, like a CD-ROM. The human haploid genome, by the way, is about 750 megabytes, which is the same size as a CD-ROM disc.

Answer 2

I don't think so, mainly because DNA isn't a language. It's convenient to think of it as one, but it's just an analogy, and it breaks down when you look closely. The properties of DNA are a function of the physical makeup and structure of the molecule itself. It's what gives it its shape, what allows proteins to bind to it, and what allows it to be translated into RNA and then into proteins.



It's closer to the workings of a machine than it is to a language. As such, I thin a base-anything system would be too simplistic to describe it. It would be like trying to reduce a car engine into a numeral system... and we're just talking about a few bases at a time, here. An entire gene is much more complex, so it's more like a car engine made out of car engines. OK, my analogy is starting to break down, but my point still holds.



So we can describe DNA using a base-4 system, in a sense, but there's not much you can do with it. Some things behave in a consistent manner (like the 3-base codons that code for specific amino acids), but there's a limit to what we can tell by simply knowing the sequence. We can't know what it's going to do until we actually observe it in action.

Answer 3

Ofcourse it does, without veiwng DNA in this manner then it would be impossible to understand how or why it is the building block of all life.

The 4 codes are

Adenine which pairs with Thymine

and

Cytosine which pairs with Guanine



these 4 symbols are responsible for providing the code for every amino acid in the body and in turn every cell. Without the meaning of the 4 symbols DNA is both useless and a cipher.

Answer 4

Viewing the DNA as a code of 4 symbols helps us understand how the DNA relates to the amino acids and proteins it codes for - for example, although in codes of three bases coding for one amino acid and there are four bases, there are 64 possible 'triplet codes' of three bases and so DNA could code for 64 amino acids - but it only codes for 22 amino acids, because many AA's use the same code more than once.



Viewing DNA like a code means when you look at huge stretches of DNA, for example the length of a gene, you can calculate how many AA's it codes for, which ones and what the polypeptide formed will be. You can then also compare genes and stretches of DNA easily and properly measure the differences between genes. This is used in the same animal, or different species and in many fields including medicine, evolution and genetics.

Answer 5

I don't see any immediate use for it. It could work as a notation system for genes, but then, we already have that. There's no inherent order in the bases, so relating them to a base-4 numeral system would be arbitrary and "adding" genes to each other is meaningless, so that's out, too.



I wouldn't completely rule out a use for it, but I have no idea what it could be.

Answer 6

i think of the main attainable reason is that it grow to be on the orders of King Louis IV of France. it particularly is real that the nos. can confuse, even though it is not that uncomplicated to study even arabic numerals on a clock whilst all of them face the centre, so of course human beings could have been waiting to study the place the nos. have been in rotation regardless of a achievable confusion. i think of it particularly is previous formed how human beings hang to Roman numerals as icons of classical civiisation, regardless of the sparkling superiority of the Arabic quantity device.