From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Wed Mar 20 2002 - 11:43:03 MST
Brian D Williams wrote:
>
> >From: Mike Lorrey <mlorrey@datamann.com>
>
> >http://www.attotron.com/cybertory/analysis/secret.htm
>
> >Is this supercool or what?
>
> Fun, extremely weak, but fun....
>
> A AGG a GCA B AGT b GCC C ATA c GCG D ATC d GCT E ATG e GGA
> F ATT f GGC G CAA g GGG H CAC h GGT I CAG i GTA J CAT j GTC
> K CCA k GTG L CCC l GTT M CCG m TAA N CCT n TAC O CGA o TAG
> P CGC p TAT Q CGG q TCA R CGT r TCC S CTA s TCG T CTC t TCT
> U CTG u TGA V CTT v TGC W GAA w TGG X GAC x TGT Y GAG y TTA
> Z GAT z TTC
>
> TTG is space etc.
>
> Get your Extropian decoder rings out....
Dude, that is so weak. If you're going to encode messages in DNA, I expect
all the information to be encoded by selecting between several different
codons that indicate the same amino acid. For example, UUU and UUC both
code for phenylalanine; UUA, UUG, CUU, CUC, UCA, and CUG all code for
leucine, and so on. By selecting which codon represents a given amino
acide, you should be able to code at least one bit of information into most
codons. That way you can encode information into the specification of an
arbitrary protein, with the expressed protein remaining constant through the
encryption process. Of course this does not permit you to encode one letter
per codon, more like one bit per codon, but the one-to-one correspondence
was a weak scheme anyway. Alas, I'm not sure this trick would work with
whole organisms; it might throw off the genes that regulate the suppression
and expression of genes.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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