Reply to comment

I was speaking with Alex about this for a bit and some interesting points arose:

(I'm just babbling them randomly)

Is it possible to reduce DNA to such a simple model? If I recall my bio correctly, DNA operates through the nucleotides, which form codons (sets of three nucleotides) which then code for different proteins, and using the appropriate form of RNA (tRNA?) link together the various materials for said proteins. In this case, there is no true binary operation occurring - codons aren't on and off, but instead they code for any number of proteins. Are you saying this a multi-state CA, one state per protein and an "off state" for the DNA Stop Codon(s) that ends the protein construction?

DNA is more a set of instructions, no? Therefore perhaps it operates more like the Rules Set than the CA itself? And if it's the Rules Set, then perhaps the CA that actually occurs is in the protein synthesis via the (t?)RNA? Or maybe it's just semantics...

Perhaps DNA is one of the irreducible elements that the CA has provided, but still functions in somewhat analogous ways?