Thanks for the detailed answer, you've given me a bunch of stuff to go read about. My original idea came from something from SENS about moving mitochondrial DNA into the nucleus to take advantage of the better repair systems: http://www.sens.org/sens-research/research-themes/mitosens
Obviously it would be more complex than
if hash(nuclear DNA) != clean_DNA_hash) die;
but I wonder to what extent the immune system could be enhanced. I wonder if there are some techniques that could be adapted from the computer virus/malware detection field back into biology.
A recent article on creating false-positives for a virus scanner (http://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/aids8064.html) by analysing the signatures makes me think of creating 'virus pre-images' for vaccination.
Other than the specialised cells which manipulate their own genome, would there be value in positively checksumming {D,R}NA, rather than adaptively pattern-matching for the bad ones, which is (I think) how it mostly works now?
Granted, you'd be hindering the evolutionary process by preventing mutation, but if we ever intend to start messing around inside ourselves, the first step would probably be to make sure that whatever we create, it's going to stay that way, or die.
One interesting thing to remember about the human immune system is that its always on - IE it spends more time correctly identifying something as NOT THREAT, than it does spending time finding THREAT. Mucking about with this could have extreme consequences, a la auto-immune diseases for example.
Obviously it would be more complex than
but I wonder to what extent the immune system could be enhanced. I wonder if there are some techniques that could be adapted from the computer virus/malware detection field back into biology.A recent article on creating false-positives for a virus scanner (http://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/aids8064.html) by analysing the signatures makes me think of creating 'virus pre-images' for vaccination.
Other than the specialised cells which manipulate their own genome, would there be value in positively checksumming {D,R}NA, rather than adaptively pattern-matching for the bad ones, which is (I think) how it mostly works now?
Granted, you'd be hindering the evolutionary process by preventing mutation, but if we ever intend to start messing around inside ourselves, the first step would probably be to make sure that whatever we create, it's going to stay that way, or die.