Scientific American's The Hidden Genetic Program of Complex Organisms
grabbed my attention last week. This could be the biological
equivalent of the discovery of dark matter. Basically, the 'junk'
or intron DNA that forms a majority of our genome may not be junk at
all, but rather control code that regulates the expression of other
genes.
The programming analogy would be, I think, that the protein-coding
parts of the genome would be the firmware or opcodes while the control
DNA is the source code that controls when and how the opcodes are
executed. Aside from the sheer coolness of understanding how life
actually works, there's a huge potential here for doing useful genetic
manipulation. It's got to be easier to tweak control code than to
try to edit firmware... (Free link on same subject: The Unseen Genome.)
Monday, October 18, 2004
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment