| RavenBlog |
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| Comments on Friday 1 February 2008: |
| Like DNA but bored of the same old quaternary structures? Irked that the only things you can spell are GATTACA, ACT, TACT, CAT, GAG, TAG, TAT, AT and TA? Science to the rescue! Add M and S to your genetic codes! Spell real 5-letter words such as MAGMA and AMASS! Experience the confusion that results from trying to decide which of "hexal", "hexernary", "sexernary" or "sexal" should be used to describe the new base! But it's a New Scientist article so they probably really just made alphabet soup or something and it got all hyped up. [08:31] |
| RavenBlack |
| Apparently it goes binary, ternary, quaternary, quinary, senary, septenary, octal, nonary, decimal (or denary if you wish), undenary, duodenary, ?, ?, ?, hexadecimal. So it's just the ones that get used [except binary] that are exceptions to the bulk of the language-selection pattern. Also, 'senary' is a crap word and 'quaternary' is a nice word, so they should just throw the new genes back into the alphabet primordial soup until they find enough to give us base eleven or twelve. |