Yale scientists recently revealed why living organism malfunction less than computers, after doing a study on it. The Yale team compared the evolution of organisms and computer operating system. They analyzed the control networks in both Linux operating system as well as bacterium Escherichia coli.
They found out that both E coli and the Linux networks are arranged in hierarchies, but with some notable differences in how they achieve operational efficiencies. There was differences in the molecular network arrangement. When its arranged in a pyramid in bacteria, its inverted pyramid in Linux operating system. There were only limited number of master regulatory genes at the top that control a broad base of specialized functions, which act independently in bacteria. But taking the case of Linux operating system, there were many different top-level routines controlling few generic functions at the bottom of the network. According to Gerstein, this is because software engineers tend to save money and time by building upon existing routines rather than starting systems from scratch. He also added that operating system is more vulnerable to breakdowns because even simple updates to a generic routing can be very disruptive. To compensate this, generic routines need to be fine-tuned periodically by designers.
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