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They aren't. (The workings of body and mind are not encoded in DNA.) The only thing that's encoded in DNA is how to make proteins. Everything else is emergen
by jbotz 6y ago
They aren't. (The workings of body and mind are not encoded in DNA.)
The only thing that's encoded in DNA is how to make proteins. Everything else is emergent from the interactions of those proteins and "encoded" only in evolutionary history of how those interactions work when they do so in a repeatable fashion. DNA is not a "blueprint" for making a body or a mind... it is much more like the "seed" pattern for a run of Conway's Game of Life, except with a bit of indeterminism for environmental influences thrown in. There are things about the phenotype you can predict from the DNA because you've got past examples, but a small change in initial conditions or the environment during development can also throw you way off... you have to run the whole process (i.e. grow a complete animal) to ever be sure what the phenotype looks like or behaves like.
- patcon 6y agoReading this as a biochemist in a past life, this was a WONDERFUL explanation.
- pygy_ 6y agoThe blueprint analogy is too simplistic. Some genes called "transcription factors" activate and/or inhibit the expression of other genes, including other transcription factors. They form networks functionally equivalent to neuronal nets.
- ganzuul 6y agoIt would make sense if cells were only interested in talking about certain topics. In that case we could simulate the evolution of their communication and ignore what is causing the communication. There should be an upper bound to the complexity of their communication because of game theory. Tit-for-tat only supports an error rate of up to 9 percent, so at the upper bound cells will need to differentiate. This is a lot of domain knowledge to accelerate the computation by, provided the theory is correct.
- encypruon 6y ago> The only thing that's encoded in DNA is how to make proteins. Wikipedia on the human genome [1]: > Protein-coding sequences account for only a very small fraction of the genome (approximately 1.5%), and the rest is associated with non-coding RNA genes, regulatory DNA sequences, LINEs, SINEs, introns, and sequences for which as yet no function has been determined. Wikipedia cites [2]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genome [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/35057062 https://www.nature.com/articles/35057062 Edit: Formatting
- ncmncm 6y agoStill. The point remains that the products of DNA self-assemble, in the correct environment, into the pattern that determines the organism. Eliminate that environment, and it is just a stew of RNA and proteins.