Episode Details

In 2017 I presented on DNA: The code of life. Since then there have been many new developments, and I've learned how to explain the matter better. I am submitting two talks this year, and this short one is 1) fun on its own and 2) helps you appreciate the other talk ('reverse engineering the whole source code of a bacterium') more DNA is the code of life. Surprisingly, it is easier to understand DNA as "biologically flavored digital data" than the other way around, "a really long molecule with digital aspects". Human DNA is 750 megabytes, organized in chromosomes and within that stored in genes and intergenic matter. There are things like calling conventions, "start of gene markers". There are #ifdefs in there. There is bloated code. There are hacks. In this talk, I give a tour of our modern understanding of DNA, which should be exciting for nearly everyone into computers. Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ about this event: https://program.why2025.org/why2025/talk/GGDRKY/