November 30, 2017 Thursday
Bedtime Story
Algorithm of CRISPR/Cas Immune System
As I said last night that I will be
culminating my story on CRISPR/Cas system since by now it has been well
established the extreme similarity between digital information that uses codes
of “0” and “1” and genetic information that uses code of four “A”, “G”, “C” and
“T” or “U”.
Just as a departing demonstration, I will
present you the algorithm that is used by the CRISPR/Cas system to provide
immunity to microbes against the phages.
CRISPR.wander() – until encounter another
molecule
If (new molecule contains DNA and DNA
matches CRISPR.DNA)
CRISPR.cas9.grab() // nab the viral DNA
CRISPR.cas9.chop() // kill the virus!
Continue
In mere four lines, we have the secret to
this novel (to us) immune system of bacteria and Archaea.
So I hope with this specific example of
bacterial immune system against phages I was able to substantiate my claim that
life is at its core digital information.
With this much, I would like to return back
to the beginnings of digital technology and take you to something that is very
much related to lambda calculus.
Before I had digressed to the CRISPR/Cas
system I had taken you through my journey into the world of combinatory logic
and lambda calculus, and during that voyage I had briefly mentioned the concept
of Turing machine.
I remember very specifically having
asserted that both lambda calculus and Turing Machine are equivalent models of
computation.
Any Turing Machine program can be
translated into equivalent lambda calculus program and vice versa.
Besides, both have a common origin in the
famous historical Entscheidungsproblem that was posed by Hilbert in 1928.
Turing machine caused a great confusion in
me when I first came across it few years ago.
This was primarily because of the word
“machine” in the name tag which is a complete misnomer.
There is no physical machine by the name of
Turing that you will come across in any computer science museum.
Turing machine is an abstraction.
To be more precise it is a mathematical
model of computation that according to the student and friend of Turing, Robin
Gandy (pronounced as an Englishman would pronounce ‘Gandhi’) dates back to the
idea of Analytical Engine of Charles Babbage.
Robin Gandy was himself a mathematician and
logician and had made in in-depth study of the work of Charles Babbage, Alan
Turing and Alonzo Church.
Just to put the three men into their correct
historical perspectives, Turing and Church were contemporaries while they were
both a generation apart from Babbage.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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