Monday, October 18, 2004

Random Note: DNA's Dark Matter

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.)

No comments: