The computational aspects of DNA become more evident each day. Recently a series of experiments have suggested that classic Mendelian genetics is not the whole story. Specifically, contrary to classic Mendel, a certain research plant can revert back to its original grandparents after breeding. It would be like you recovering genes of your grandparents that your parents did not have. The question is, if this is true, where do the old genes come from? Because the research was done on plants, some skeptical of the findings thought it came from cross-pollination even though the plants self-pollinate. New research in isolated chambers dismisses that conjecture. But the original researcher has an idea, as recounted in a The Scientist article:

    According to this theory, somewhere in the plant cells exists an RNA copy of ancestral DNA.

    In other words, cells carry their own internal backups. For some reason, something can trigger the "restore" button and the chromosome is restored with an archival version of the gene.

    That's one of several theories but all of them assume that the genetic information process in a cell is like a computer with dozens of weird sum-checking, error-correcting, self-governing circuits -- and all the recursive weirdness they entail.

    DNA具有計算機功能的這一特征變得日益顯著。最近一系列試驗表明經(jīng)典的孟德爾基因?qū)W說并非無懈可擊。具體而言，和孟德爾學說相反的是，某種特定的用來做實驗的植物在經(jīng)過培育之后會出現(xiàn)返祖現(xiàn)象。就好像你會恢復成你祖父母的基因，而這些基因在你父母身上并不存在。問題是，如果這是真的，那么原先你身上的那些基因從何而來呢？由于這是基于植物的實驗，有人懷疑這是植物間交叉?zhèn)鞣鄣慕Y果（即使這些植物是自花傳粉的）.然而，一項在封閉的密室里進行的新的研究否定了這種猜測。但是最初研究這個實驗的科學家卻有這樣的一個想法（轉述《科學》雜志文摘）:

    根據(jù)理論，在植物細胞的某個地方存在一個父代DNA的RNA副本。

    換言之，植物細胞內(nèi)部有備份。在某些情況下，某些物質(zhì)一旦觸發(fā)"恢復"按鈕，基因染色體就會恢復到之前的那個備份版本。

    類似的理論還有很多種，但是所有的這些理論都同時得出一個假設：細胞內(nèi)部的信息處理過程就好像一臺計算機，具有數(shù)十個千奇百怪的自動求和、糾錯、自我調(diào)理電路等功能，以及它們需要的奇怪的遞歸程序。