Error Detection & Correction in Replicating Machines
Replication with Error Working Group
Introduction
Biological systems are replicating machines that make (a small number of) errors during the machine replication process. From a practical engineering standpoint, we need to understand how to design biological systems that perform as expected. We can imagine that a future biological engineer might be called upon to design an 8-bit counter that has a p(working) > 0.99 upto 256 doubling events. Or, we can imagine needing to design a metabolic pathway that has a p(failure) > 0.99 after 3000 doubling events. And so on. In other words, the evolutionary stability, or lack thereof, for our engineering biological systems should become part of the initial system specification, and our designs should be able to meet these specifications. From a scientific perspective, we suspect that learning how to solve questions of error detection and correction in replicating machines will lead to a better understanding of biological evolution.
Participating Folks
Meeting Archive
Next Meeting
- PROPOSED 4-6p on Tuesday August 30 Room TBA
- DE, JG, AL are OK
- TK, GJS, JK, BC are pending
Assignments
- Read/skim Haussler papers
- Read/skim Kelly thesis proposal
- Kelly to provide PDF and point out relevant sections
- Read/skim Alon paper
Suggested Folks (not yet contacted/signed up)
- Norm Margolus
- Jonathan Rees
Background Reading & External Links
- Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, John von Neumann
- Drew has a copy of this if anybody wants to read it.
- html version
- Daniel Weise @ UW CS
