Now I am sort of on home territory, as I do genetics as a day job.
We have very few commented out genes (apart from a reasonable number of genes for olfactory nerves, our sense of smell would appear to of less importance to us than it is to our ancesters, so they do appear to have been commented out). The genes themselves are just a small part of the story. What is more important is how they are turned on and off, and in what way they are turned on and off, and that is what the much of the rest of the DNA is involved with. How it does it and the role of any specific part of the DNA is still very unclear. The information is clearly distributed and redundant. But that is where you find the information that tells the often very generic genes to express themselves in order to make gills, or arms.
I'll let you know if I find a copyright statement. I spend quite a lot of time browsing through the DNA looking for anomalies.
Nigel On 09/03/2012 23:01, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote:
. LOL! I'm sure the gods employed over in DoE (Department of Evolution) have similar issues. It would seem that most of our genes have been commented out. A good compression scheme would probably reduce our chromosomes down to two or three average size strands. This is understandable. When it comes to writing computer code it is often prudent to comment out no longer used code rather than delete it. You just never know. Perhaps the need for gills or a tale will once again come in handy in another million years or so. Unfortunately, all of that commenting-out turns code maintenance into a messy task. I also suspect... somewhere... embedded in a string of commented out code is the following statement: (C) Copyright Zeta Reticuli, all rights reserved. Version 3.4.11.34272 currently activated. Next revision slated for 3047, plus or minus a few hundred years. This will include a few bug fixes, like actively filtering out genetic combinations that have a tendency to produce biological containers that think like Rush Limbaugh. Regards Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com www.zazzle.com/orionworks
