[Turing_Machine]

Genomes are absolutely digital. GATC is no different from 1 and 0. It's just using a different base (pun intended).

Files on disks have end of file markers, just like the start and stop sequences in DNA. Operating systems have cron jobs (themselves digital) that control when other programs execute.

[dekhn]

You mean "DNA sequences are digital" in that base pairs map to a sequence of enumerations.

However, genomes aren't digital. They're 3D structures with a ton of attributes that are not trivially representable digitally.

[sooheon]

In the same way software code is digital but the hard drives that hold them are not?

[shakow]

Genomes are much more than just their sequence. Their spatial organisation, their methylation, their fiolding, their packing etc, have no equivalents in a filesystem.

[sooheon]

You're talking about a digital<->analog interface. Take a digitally encoded audio file, read it out and turn it into sound waves using a digital analog converter, play it out on physical speakers, record it back with a microphone, use that information to control a robotic arm with a magnet that will swipe over the physical medium... etc. They are absolutely analogous.