The population changed because the individuals least susceptible to the cancer reproduced more.
I made a a large swooping statement and had this in mind -> http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/n1/full/nn.3594.html
When I read it the first time if blew my mind. In principle - traumatic memories developed in presence of a particular scent triggered responses in subsequent generations - without the generations entering into social contact (a case of a female mouse to its offspring). Don't know how well established is statistics in this study though and how well replicated was the study. It suggests a storage of the information beyond central nervous system - in mammalian sperm.
Each new version of Chrome, Firefox, IE are SW evolutions. So are all new versions of iOS, Android OSx, Linux, Windows.
They are evolving to add new features, defense against new attacks.
Maybe, just maybe "SW, System" are "Intelligent Design" and programmers are the "Intelligent"? :-)
Drawing a parallel with software stack -> we invented it and there are very few of us (sure as hell not me) that would understand a full stack of the browser and its environment I am currently using. Now faced with a large trove of DNA data - we know it works. Stationary we could show how a particular part affects a particular protein production. The full on rolling in-vivo interactions are way beyond the reach - reverse engineering them proves quite a challenge.
Would life be akin to running a code that keeps data and states in the code itself, continuing running itself though the changed code?
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Anybody here is cracking an interesting biotechnological problem with a fancy software stack - one that could be shared for a good story?