>Slight analogy: What we have with the genome is the compiled code of the program, the sum over all epigenetic marks somewhat is the state at run time. Now you

>Slight analogy: What we have with the genome is the compiled code of the program, the sum over all epigenetic marks somewhat is the state at run time. Now you're talking. That's a brilliant analogy, I'm stealing it for the next time I explain CS to biologists, thanks! >The (idealistic) idea there is rather to take a virus that performs the modification in the body in all cells. But that is still somewhat in the future as you have to make sure the virus does not spread to other persons, the changes are lasting etc. Indeed, I forgot about viruses. To sum up, to get to changing adult DNA we need a) more knowledge of the "runtime"/epigenetics to know what to change, b) ways to handle viruses if we go with them. That sounds reassuring, actually, at least we might not get stuck in Gattaca like future for too long.