4 ms·
Like a program binary, which has been developed by trial and error without a design, which uses overlapping instructions that mean different things depending on
by phaedrus 16y ago
Like a program binary, which has been developed by trial and error without a design, which uses overlapping instructions that mean different things depending on the entry point, and which makes extensive use of self modifying code (via gene expression). And which goes through three phases of binary to binary translation: DNA->RNA->Proteins.
- mbreese 16y agoAnd that's just the simple stuff. Now imagine that you will silence a lot of the binary code, only running small parts of it. But you may not know which parts. I think this is one of the big things to come out of the human genome project: exactly how little is there. And since there is so little code to work with, there is a bigger need for epigenetic regulation and alternative splicing.