Tom WSMF wrote:
> --]> then evolution dicates it must be useful, or at least once was useful"
> --]> argument.
>
> Coorrect me if im wrong, but the gentic make up a creature certianly seems
> to be a pack rats dream. How much stuff is stuffed into the code that will
> nto get used, gets used in non usefull ways, gets used in ways damaging to
> the creature itself.
>
> Can it not be said that we are the products of a bloated code sequence
> that has, as all bloat ware does, feature creep and bugs a gogo?
The beautiful thing about our chatty and inherently buggy encoding scheme is
that those errors are themselves the drivers of biological progress over
evolutionary time. An error-free encoding scheme would be an evolutionary
disaster. Fact is, it's the little tiny differences that count. Human beings
differ by less than a 10th of a percent, genetically; we only differ from some
of the apes by a percent or so; and you, Tom Whore, have about 50% the same
information encoded in your genome as a *banana.* (So does everybody on FoRK.
;-)
The genome's not the whole story, though; it's the proteome that really
counts. Functional proteomics, guys --- next big thing. :-)
jb
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Apr 29 2001 - 20:26:01 PDT