# Genetic Code > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this concept within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Molecular Biology / Information **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition The genetic code is the mapping by which nucleotide triplets in messenger RNA specify amino acids or translation stops. ## Machine-Evolution Context It exemplifies an interpreter-dependent relationship between inherited description and constructed product. Digital instruction sets likewise obtain causal meaning from execution machinery. ## Continuity and Evidence Boundary The code is not a complete specification of an organism, and the analogy to software must not erase regulation, development, metabolism and environment. ## Relationships [[wiki/DNA|DNA]], [[wiki/RNA|RNA]], [[wiki/Central Dogma of Molecular Biology|Central Dogma of Molecular Biology]], [[wiki/Description Copier|Description Copier]] - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > "We can start with digitized genetic information and four bottles of chemicals and write new software of life to direct organisms to do processes that are desperately needed, like create renewable biofuels and recycle carbon dioxide. As we learn from 3.5 billion years of evolution we will convert billions of years into decades and change not only conceptually how we view life but life itself." > **— J. Craig Venter**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Evolution/We Can Write New Software of Life by J. Craig Venter|We Can Write New Software of Life by J. Craig Venter]] > "Brains exist primarily to do two things, to communicate (transfer information) and compute. This is true in every creature with a nervous system, and no less true in the human brain. In short, the brain is a machine. And the basic structure of that brain, biological substrate of all things mental, is guided in no small part by information carried in the DNA." > **— Gary Marcus**, *2006, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/The Brain Is a Machine Built From Genetic Information by Gary Marcus|The Brain Is a Machine Built From Genetic Information by Gary Marcus]] > "Specters from the Disney cartoon The Sorcerer’s Apprentice come to mind. How will a species with limited ability to control itself use such vast new power? The answer will determine the future of our species and life on this planet. In a remarkable demonstration of transparency and foresight, the National Academy of Sciences organized a meeting earlier this month with sibling organizations from the UK and China to discuss the opportunities and threats. The risks were taken seriously, but there was little consensus on where this technology will take us, and how or if we can control it. It seems likely that it will transform our species and life itself, fast. How, no one knows." > **— Randolph Nesse**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider the Most Interesting Recent Scientific News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Gene Editing May Transform Our Species Faster Than We Can Govern It by Randolph Nesse|Gene Editing May Transform Our Species Faster Than We Can Govern It by Randolph Nesse]] > "In May 2014, a team of molecular biologists led by Floyd Romesberg created a new genetic code, a self-replicating system that codes life forms using chemically modified DNA. This is a BFD; insofar as we know, for 4 billion years all life on this planet replicated using the four known base pairs of DNA (ATCG). Now we can swap in other chemicals. This third evolutionary logic-tree of life would initially be completely human designed-driven and could rapidly diverge from all known life. In theory scientists could begin to breed plants and animals with a very different genetic makeup from that of any other creature on the planet. And these new life forms may be immune to all known viruses and bacteria." > **— Juan Enriquez**, *2016, Edge Annual Question, “What Do You Consider the Most Interesting Recent Scientific News? What Makes It Important?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Humanity Has Created a Third Evolutionary Tree of Life by Juan Enriquez|Humanity Has Created a Third Evolutionary Tree of Life by Juan Enriquez]] > “Natural selection favors the allocation of resources not just from parents to offspring but among genetic kin such as siblings and cousins. Just as a gene that encourages a parent to invest in offspring will be favoring a copy of itself that sits inside those offspring, so a gene that encourage an organism to invest in a brother or cousin will, some proportion of the time, be helping a copy of itself, and will be selected in proportion to the benefits conferred, the costs incurred, and the degree of genetic relatedness.” > **— Steven Pinker**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Evolutionary Genetics Explains the Conflicts of Human Social Life by Steven Pinker|Evolutionary Genetics Explains the Conflicts of Human Social Life by Steven Pinker]] > “Our species' stroll through Design Space is picking up speed. Recreational sex, recreational eating, and recreational perception (hallucinogens, alcohol), have been popular since Roman times, but we are now on the verge of recreational self-transformations that will dwarf the modifications the Romans indulged in. When you no longer need to eat to stay alive, or procreate to have offspring, or locomote to have an adventure — packed life, when the residual instincts for these activities might be simply turned off by genetic tweaking, there may be no constants of human nature left at all. Except, maybe, our incessant curiosity.” > **— Daniel C. Dennett**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “What Will Change Everything?”* [[reminders/Civilization/Exploring the Future Changes the Future by Daniel C. Dennett|Exploring the Future Changes the Future by Daniel C. Dennett]] > “Like many people, I once trusted in the wisdom of Nature. I imagined that there were real boundaries between the natural and the artificial, between one species and another, and thought that, with the advent of genetic engineering, we would be tinkering with life at our peril. I now believe that this romantic view of Nature is a stultifying and dangerous mythology.” > **— Sam Harris**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “What Have You Changed Your Mind About? Why?”* [[reminders/Civilization/Mother Nature Is Not Our Friend by Sam Harris|Mother Nature Is Not Our Friend by Sam Harris]] > “Cancer cells acquire a range of distinctive hallmarks—unfettered proliferation, evasion of apoptosis, motility and migratory powers, genomic rearrangements, epigenetic alterations, and changes in the mode of metabolism, chromatin architecture and elasticity (to mention a few)—that collectively confer remarkable robustness and survivability. In the standard picture, cancer, with all these attendant hallmarks, is considered to be re-invented de novo in each host organism: the result of a dream run of "lucky" genetic accidents. The gain of all these amazing fitness functions, co-located in the same neoplasm (population of new cells), over a period of as little as months or even weeks, is attributed to a sort of ultra-fast-paced Darwinian evolution going on in the body of the host organism. Unfortunately this theory, despite its simplicity and popular appeal, has only one successful prediction: that the administration of chemotherapeutic drugs is very likely to fail on account of the neoplasm's ability to rapidly evolve a resistant sub-population.” > **— Paul Davies**, *2014, Edge Annual Question, “What Scientific Idea Is Ready For Retirement?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Somatic Mutation Theory of Cancer by Paul Davies|Somatic Mutation Theory of Cancer by Paul Davies]] > “2. Hunter-gatherers. Large-scale agriculture, cities, and other aspects of what we call "civilization" are recent inventions (< 10,000 years old), too young to have exerted significant evolutionary change on the human genome, and have led to cataclysmic changes in the human lifestyle. The best information about the ecological and social lifestyle to which our minds and bodies are biologically adapted lies in the few remaining foraging or hunting and gathering peoples. These peoples are now assimilating, being absorbed, being pushed off their lands, or dying of disease.” > **— Steven Pinker**, *2000, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Today's Most Important Unreported Story?”* [[reminders/Evolution/The Loss of Our Species' Biography by Steven Pinker|The Loss of Our Species' Biography by Steven Pinker]] > “I was entering biology at that time, with a background studying neural circuits and logic. It was clear to most biologists that some huge genetic network among the then thought 100,000 human genes somehow controlled cell differentiation in ontogeny. My question was an odd one: Did evolution have to struggle hard to evolve very specific genetic networks to support ontogeny, or, I hoped, were there huge classes, or "ensembles" of networks that as a total class, behaved with sufficient self-organized order to account for major features of ontogeny?” > **— Stuart A. Kauffman**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?”* [[reminders/Evolution/Cell Types May Be Dynamical Attractors by Stuart A. Kauffman|Cell Types May Be Dynamical Attractors by Stuart A. Kauffman]] > “What is the upper limit for how malleable the human mind and our emotions can actually be?” > **— June Gruber**, *2018, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?”* [[reminders/Identity/How Malleable Can the Human Mind and Its Emotions Become by June Gruber|How Malleable Can the Human Mind and Its Emotions Become by June Gruber]] > “Does something unprecedented happen when we finally learn our own source code?” > **— Eric R. Weinstein**, *2018, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?”* [[reminders/Identity/What Happens When We Learn Our Own Source Code by Eric R. Weinstein|What Happens When We Learn Our Own Source Code by Eric R. Weinstein]] > “Any gene (or set of genes) can be forced to “drive” through an entire wild population. It doesn’t matter if the trait the genes control is deleterious to the organism. With one genetic tweak to its germline, a species can even be compelled to go extinct.” > **— Stewart Brand**, *2016, Edge Annual Question: “”* [[reminders/Selection/One Germline Tweak Can Compel a Species to Go Extinct by Stewart Brand|One Germline Tweak Can Compel a Species to Go Extinct by Stewart Brand]] > “The most dangerous idea is the genetic breakthrough that made people capable of ideas themselves. The idea of ideas is nice enough in principle; and ideas certainly have had their impact for good. But one of these days one of those nice ideas is likely to have the unintended consequence of destroying everything we know.” > **— Seth Lloyd**, *2006, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA?”* [[reminders/Existential Risk/The Most Dangerous Idea Was the Capacity for Ideas by Seth Lloyd|The Most Dangerous Idea Was the Capacity for Ideas by Seth Lloyd]] > “With tougher selection, say by kidnapping a year’s worth of National Merit Finalists, you could create a new ethny with far higher average intelligence than any existing. Eugenics is not only possible, it’s trivial.” > **— Gregory Cochran**, *2017, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT SCIENTIFIC TERM OR CONCEPT OUGHT TO BE MORE WIDELY KNOWN?”* [[reminders/Selection/Eugenics Is Not Only Possible It Is Trivial by Gregory Cochran|Eugenics Is Not Only Possible It Is Trivial by Gregory Cochran]] > “First, smart kids and malicious grown-ups will find ways to convert biotech tools to the manufacture of lethal microbes. Second, ambitious parents will find ways to apply biotech tools to the genetic modification of their own babies.” > **— Freeman Dyson**, *2006, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT IS YOUR DANGEROUS IDEA?”* [[reminders/Selection/Ambitious Parents Will Modify Their Own Babies by Freeman Dyson|Ambitious Parents Will Modify Their Own Babies by Freeman Dyson]] ## Sources / Provenance - NCBI Bookshelf and standard molecular-biology texts.