[dark_lord]

I know you say it tongue in cheek but this has proposal has been put forth before to which I ask what would the "comment" look like? Is it written in english? In novel nucleotides?

The comment would exist in the same "character set" that DNA is written in. So yeah, the A, T, C and G nucleotides. As far as what it would look like, that's a hard one. If the comments were encrypted the first problem would be to determine if there is valid, but encrypted, information there - as opposed to random junk. And since DNA is rather like "open source", if I had to bet it would be that the comments would be encrypted.

Doing a bit of web searching, I found this! Now isn't that interesting?

[RightWingNilla]

As far as what it would look like, that's a hard one.

This is the whole problem here. You have to make a real prediction as to what ID would tell us to look for.

[Aric2000]

Now that is pretty cool, I followed your link, very fascinating.

It would be an excellent way for Genetics companies to protect their intellectual property.

You hide your license or whatever within the DNA sequences themselves, then if a competing company comes out with a similar genetic product, you would be able to tell if it was reverse engineered from your own product and therefore you would have a very tight case to take to court.

It is a great concept, but what was your point exactly?

That the Great ID'r in the sky has left his mark in the DNA sequence somewhere?

Well, seek and perhaps ye shall find and be the saviour of ID'rs everywhere.

You might even win a nobel prize.

Now, the question is, how do you decrypt the encyption that you believe is there, and where will it be in the genetic sequences?

Also the problem is that if indeed that sequence is in there, with the billions of sequences, you are going to be able to come up with just about anything, so you are going to have to refine your search, how will you refine your search?

You will try to go down to the simplest sequences, this is where evolution kicks in.

So where in the genetic sequences are the oldest? therefore the most likely place to find this imprint that you are looking for, I would go to the simplest lifeforms that are also the oldest lifeforms, most likely the sequence you are looking for, if it exists, will be there, and the easiest to find there.

That is where evolution would tell me to go to find such a sequence if it exists.