[happy_tentacles]

While it is a feel good story - that's also a remarkable reminder of how little do we know. Sure, we most likely have few full instances of Tasmanian Devil's DNA (accounting for reading errors that is). This just tells me how far off we are from actual understanding how this machinery adjusted to the external threat.

Drawing a parallel with software stack -> we invented it and there are very few of us (sure as hell not me) that would understand a full stack of the browser and its environment I am currently using. Now faced with a large trove of DNA data - we know it works. Stationary we could show how a particular part affects a particular protein production. The full on rolling in-vivo interactions are way beyond the reach - reverse engineering them proves quite a challenge.

Would life be akin to running a code that keeps data and states in the code itself, continuing running itself though the changed code?

-

Anybody here is cracking an interesting biotechnological problem with a fancy software stack - one that could be shared for a good story?

[maxerickson]

The DNA didn't adjust, the population changed.

The population changed because the individuals least susceptible to the cancer reproduced more.

[happy_tentacles]

Yeap, in case of Tasmanian Devils you are right.

I made a a large swooping statement and had this in mind -> http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/n1/full/nn.3594.html

When I read it the first time if blew my mind. In principle - traumatic memories developed in presence of a particular scent triggered responses in subsequent generations - without the generations entering into social contact (a case of a female mouse to its offspring). Don't know how well established is statistics in this study though and how well replicated was the study. It suggests a storage of the information beyond central nervous system - in mammalian sperm.

[dekhn]

Can you say that for certain in this case? In particular, any time you sequence a population, you see a large number of "novel" SNPs (or collections of SNPs), where the mutations were introduced in the germline of the parent and inherited, but weren't present in the parent's somatic cell line. And that's exactly what they saw in this paper. So I'm not certain you can claim that the DNA didn't adjust (rather, that natural mutations didn't contribute to the survivor's higher reproduction rate).

[tkinom]

Computer system and SW are constantly evolving.

Each new version of Chrome, Firefox, IE are SW evolutions. So are all new versions of iOS, Android OSx, Linux, Windows.

They are evolving to add new features, defense against new attacks.

Maybe, just maybe "SW, System" are "Intelligent Design" and programmers are the "Intelligent"? :-)