Imagine (this is wrong, but imagine) you're trying to build a machine that copies and executes code - a cell. You would think you would need some kind of inverse model of the code to read it and execute it's instructions. Think, code and a compiler. The compiler is a model of the code, matching commands to sequences of assembly code. So in the case if DNA, you have the yuuuge problem that there's no fucking compiler.
With DNA, the map and the territory are one thing. Actually, its even more extreme - the map exists before the territory and the territory will modify itself if the map tells it to. And yet more extreme - if you change the spelling of a label on the map, the spelling of other labels also change. And simultaneously the territory changes. And the territory changes may be deterministic, but they are also complex in that outputs become inputs and so the final form is nigh impossible to predict with only 100% of all instructions known. This is absurd. Its also real... So the resolution to the problem of phenotypic expression from a single map/territory with no compiler is "signal transduction pathways" - changes in environment, which can include everything from the organism's own development stage to diet to the temperature of the air, trigger different gene sequences, and then those genes simply cause cells to make specific proteins and multiply/stop multiplying, and then that will eventually trigger another signal transduction pathway.
The problem is finding the pathways when mutations are random. This is absurd... Certainly almost all mutations are fatal, thats easy to say, but imagining this interplay between discreet and nondiscreet topologies and imagining the very large numbers involved and the number of generations that must be necessary to find some recursive system of signal pathways such that a gene can express a form **_and then turn the fuck off and not turn into a cancerous blob_** ... This is absurd... Surely we are the descendebts of an already dead universe, the time required being so unfathomable...
quotingI love my new hobby... But also I'm exasperated with its jargon... I see no indication that it can do anything more than describe events, the actual mechanisms of which it still hasn't penetrated. For example, in one chapter my book defines homeotic and heterochronic gene expressions, which are genes that mark the beginning of spatial or chronological transcription, and it's certainly interesting - getting a leg to grow out of a drosophila fly's head is cool - but there doesn't appear to be any understanding of the mechanism by which it is actually done. They've found these relationships by destroying different segments of DNA, then noting what changes. But where's the **_actual_** information that describes phenotypic expression? DNA is a protein library ; geometry isn't in there. There's just no way DNA contains the density of information required for phenotypes...
nevent1q…skww
What annoys me is how it appears to be trying to appear authoritative, as if it has all the answers, instead of putting the problem front and center (or at least giving a nod to it) and saying, "this is the mystery, bounty of great renown to whoever solves it!"