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For me the most enlightening summary regarding information encoding in genomes is the following quote from the article: Being amazed that you can make a human

For me the most enlightening summary regarding information encoding in genomes is the following quote from the article: Being amazed that you can make a human with only 20,000 genes is thus like being amazed that Shakespeare could write all those plays with only 26 letters. It’s totally missing where the actual, meaningful information is and how it is decoded.

freepor 7y ago
Can you answer the question of where the meaningful information is in the genome? In Shakespeare or Dr. Seuss it’s in the combinatorial power of language to express concepts. With just 200 words Seuss could write stories like the Cat in the Hat. Is genetics similar?
- glofish 7y ago
  My interpretation is that just as with words that in a different order may mean different things, genes expressing in a different order or at different times could have radically different effects. The simplified cartoon image that is associated with DNA, where phenotypes are directly connecting to specific genes - i.e. this mutation makes you smart, or that mutation causes cancer - is not at all how biology works.
jacquesm 7y ago
I can do a lot better than that with just 1's and 0's. The sentence makes exactly the error that it accuses others of making, the '20,000 genes' is not the encoding, that's the codons of which there are 64 some of which encode the same amino acid. The 20,000 really is like a single play of Shakespeare.
- glofish 7y ago
  Genes are regions on the genome, now whether or not are translated by 3 (as codons) does not seem to be relevant. The quote is a criticism of a common way of thinking in biology, where many (if not most) practitioners think in terms "one gene does one thing" (or perhaps few things at most). When one follows that mentality it becomes hard to explain how just 20K genes could make a living organism.
  - Real_S 7y ago
    The analogy I often use is houses. Think of all the components used to build a complete house. One can use the same bricks, wood, tile, etc, to build many different houses. But the location of these components in the house is not enough, the order in which they are added is critical. The genome must encode all the components used to make an organism, as well as the instructions on how and when to use these components.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    The attempt to make analogies with biology from writing and computing will always fail. Biology is messy, lots of repeated use of the same data, circular references and other things that we find hard to interpret. It's as if starting on the second letter of a book instead of the first will give you a different story. The 'one gene, one thing' or just a few things at most meme died long ago for all biology practitioners that are with the times, the problem is more with IT people attempting to understand biology trying to make computing analogies to make sense of something that evolved rather than that it was designed.

freepor 7y ago

Can you answer the question of where the meaningful information is in the genome? In Shakespeare or Dr. Seuss it’s in the combinatorial power of language to express concepts. With just 200 words Seuss could write stories like the Cat in the Hat. Is genetics similar?

glofish 7y ago
My interpretation is that just as with words that in a different order may mean different things, genes expressing in a different order or at different times could have radically different effects. The simplified cartoon image that is associated with DNA, where phenotypes are directly connecting to specific genes - i.e. this mutation makes you smart, or that mutation causes cancer - is not at all how biology works.

jacquesm 7y ago

I can do a lot better than that with just 1's and 0's. The sentence makes exactly the error that it accuses others of making, the '20,000 genes' is not the encoding, that's the codons of which there are 64 some of which encode the same amino acid. The 20,000 really is like a single play of Shakespeare.

glofish 7y ago
Genes are regions on the genome, now whether or not are translated by 3 (as codons) does not seem to be relevant. The quote is a criticism of a common way of thinking in biology, where many (if not most) practitioners think in terms "one gene does one thing" (or perhaps few things at most). When one follows that mentality it becomes hard to explain how just 20K genes could make a living organism.
- Real_S 7y ago
  The analogy I often use is houses. Think of all the components used to build a complete house. One can use the same bricks, wood, tile, etc, to build many different houses. But the location of these components in the house is not enough, the order in which they are added is critical. The genome must encode all the components used to make an organism, as well as the instructions on how and when to use these components.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  The attempt to make analogies with biology from writing and computing will always fail. Biology is messy, lots of repeated use of the same data, circular references and other things that we find hard to interpret. It's as if starting on the second letter of a book instead of the first will give you a different story. The 'one gene, one thing' or just a few things at most meme died long ago for all biology practitioners that are with the times, the problem is more with IT people attempting to understand biology trying to make computing analogies to make sense of something that evolved rather than that it was designed.