ABSTRACT
Deciphering the human genome has held a number of surprises including an unexpectedly low number of genes to account for our preconceptions about human structure and function; especially when one has to take the existence of control mechanisms into consideration. Although a DNA molecule can be thought of as a string over an alphabet of four characters (the nucleotides) and proteins as strings over an alphabet of twenty characters (amino acids), recent discoveries have brought forth the possibility that control mechanisms of tissue differentiation which are based on purely thermodynamic principles may exist. It is proposed that the definition and quantification of such potential mechanisms requires algorithms that combine string computation with thermodynamic evaluation of the DNA translation and transcription processes.
