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FrustratedLogician t1_ixy58dq wrote

Reply to comment by AikidokaUK in Scientists Have Found a Way To Manipulate Digital Data Stored in DNA by Sorin61

I also don't understand what digital means in biological structure.

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AikidokaUK t1_ixy735y wrote

Digital is basically, like a light switch, on or off, which is shown as 1 and 0. This strung together can represent numbers 0 to 9, every letter of the alphabet and special characters.

DNA is made up of 4 chemical bases, which are represented by the letters: A, C, G & T.

Now if you you use the base of 4 (A, C, G & T) instead of a base of 2 (1 & 0), you can effectively use the DNA structure to represent what binary represents, just way more efficiently. A bit like the use of Qubits in quantum computing.

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nexisfan t1_ixy7im6 wrote

Soooo… the difference between binary, normal computers and quantum computers, right? But maybe one level above because instead of 1 and 0 in both their possible stages ( so four total) it’s 1, 2, 3, and 4, in all their possible combining states

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AikidokaUK t1_ixy80t6 wrote

Yarp. Though afaik, it can only be used for storage, not processing, unlike QC

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nexisfan t1_ixy89j0 wrote

Well, obviously it processes. Otherwise we wouldn’t exist. We might just not have figured out an artificial process for such expressions

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AikidokaUK t1_ixy8ssb wrote

When I say processing, I mean the calculations that current silicone chips carry out that ultimately manipulates something electronically, not biologically processing DNA information.

We don't have any sort of interface for that........ Yet

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