> DNA is not source code My, admittedly weak, understanding is that the analogy is (much) more apt than not. Sure, the means by which that code is 'compiled' a

> DNA is not source code My, admittedly weak, understanding is that the analogy is (much) more apt than not. Sure, the means by which that code is 'compiled' and 'executed' is much different than in the computers we've built, but, for one, DNA, genes, chromosomes, and all of the other various levels of organization of those units of information seem to be remarkably, amazingly stable, for many (most? almost all?) organisms, which seems to strongly imply that 'DNA is source code' is about as true as 'Earth is a sphere'. Sure, they're both only approximately true, but how approximately they're true (or not) is very important. Asimov explained this extremely well: - [Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong](http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm) 'Epigenetics' itself seems like it might not be a particular thing among different people: - [The misunderstanding of epigenetics – Insitome](https://blog.insito.me/the-misunderstanding-of-epigenetics-a67c99ee4058 https://blog.insito.me/the-misunderstanding-of-epigenetics-a...) What epigenetics is not is anything like Lamarckian inheritance, at least not at all to the same degree. > Rearrangements, microchimerism, epigenetics, chromosome organization etc. are all things that exist and modulate information transfer beyond the standard four letters or the 'environment' (whatever people think it means) and we're still only scratching the surface. Sure, but that doesn't mean that the central dogma of biology is entirely wrong, just that it's not always and everywhere true exactly. The current best understanding of epigenetics (quoted from my second link above) is that, whatever it is, it is such that: > very little of [genetic] inheritance is perturbed by epigenetic effects