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by Ian Bicking.
Original Post: Null-Terminated Strings Strike Again!
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Some genetic mutations introduce a stop codon in the
normal sequence. This stop codon will prematurely truncate a normal
protein, which can result in defective protein functionality. As many
as one third of genetic diseases may be caused by premature stop
codons.
This reminds me of storing binary data in null-terminated strings
(or any of a series of encoding-related bugs, and the use of sentinel
values). If we ever understand genetics, I'm convinced it will be
through a computational theory of genes, and that genetic (and
probably viral) diseases will often exhibit bugs we've come to know
from our own programming exercises.
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