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While he's seriously incorrect, it is however worth remembering that a caterpillar's DNA bases don't change at all when it becomes a butterfly. It's all about the degree those proteins get expressed, in what ratios, and (crucially) when that makes an organism. Sort of like if I give you the ingredients to a recipe:

bread cheese ham egg

You could scramble the egg, put it with the ham and cheese and put it all between bread and have a sandwich. Or you could coat the bread with the egg and throw into a frying pan and make a Monte Cristo. Both sandwiches, but pretty different.

As computer types we want to believe that DNA sequence is an analog to computer code. It's not a perfect analogy. There is the currently very hot field of research into epigenetics which is looking into the chemical decorations on DNA that make parts active and inactive at certain points in time. These are heritable, but unlike the sequence, are routinely and intentionally altered by cells in your body (often in response to environmental stimuli). So the environment can make temporary changes that get passed onto offspring, potentially affecting early stages of development. The thing is, development is crucial and not all processes are reversible (e.g. the lens in the eye only gets made once). So what long term effect do these changes have? Nobody has the foggiest idea yet.




Great information. You increased my knowledge and my appetite.

I'd say that the computer code analogy is how most people understand DNA: a set of constants with values. This is how DNA is generally portrayed.




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