Biology = Software: First Self-replicating Synthetic Bacterial Cell
Craig Venter and his team created, completely in software, a synthesized DNA chromosome (using an existing bacteria as a template) with 1.08 Million base pairs and transplanted it into another bacterial cell with its native DNA removed. The cell then self replicated into a “blue colony”. Part of the DNA sequence could not have any errors or it would be lethal to the cell, other parts of the sequence allowed certain patterns of errors. So they come up with a way to encode ascii characters using the 4 possible DNA characters (ACTG) and use it to a) encode the definition of the encoding itself and b) encode watermarks including the authors names and a project website URL onto the areas of the DNA sequence where the watermarking would not alter the behavior of the cell. The new life form multiplied for generations. Sequencing the DNA of one of these distant descendants and converting back to ascii would yield perfect reproductions of the watermarks including the web site URL. For some laughs, reviews of the paper they submitted to the journal science are sent back to them encoded with their new ascii-to-DNA encoding.
