The human genome is, at long last, complete

Re:The human genome is, at long last, complete by meowkit on Saturday April 02, 2022 @05:28PM (#30891841)

Its closer to a config file / internal functions that modify the state variables of a system instead of generating objects. The junk DNA doesn't explicitly get read, but it interacts in nonlinear ways with the executable "text" portion of the DNA.

Also disclaimer: My only knowledge of this is from Nessa Carey's The Epigenetics Revolution and some additional online reading.

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Re:The human genome is, at long last, complete by pas on Saturday April 02, 2022 @07:56PM (#30892760)

Or, more like Makefiles, and an enormous amount of cache for the runtime and build system, but this cache never really gets invalidated.

Basically it's like using a "buggy filesystem" (like ext2) that only shows the first ~16000 files in a directory. So having too much junk can hide stuff, having too little of it can uncover files that evolution carefully hid, and so on.

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Re:The human genome is, at long last, complete by robwwilliams on Saturday April 02, 2022 @10:52PM (#30893930)

No, this is the wrong metaphor. You want the right metaphor: one brilliant coder, 10 total newbie coders, and five cats walking all over the key boards. And no delete function at all!

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Re:The human genome is, at long last, complete by sterlind on Sunday April 03, 2022 @12:17AM (#30894389)

depends on what you consider non-coding, too. the ribosome is mostly made of RNA, but it's not turned into a protein. if your ribosome breaks you can't make proteins.

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