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Or alternatively, a new and unexpected behaviour might result, as indeed is guaranteed to happen if the new code can be read. And of course with DNA all we are dealing with are amino acids, we know they can be read.

As it happens I was thinking in terms of coding in binary, using tape to feed into a machine. I figured it was the best analogy for DNA, since DNA consists of 4 bases in various combinations.

Programmed a computer? nope, never interested in machine code. My stuff was mostly high level.

As part of my degree I coded real time systems in ADA, of all things it was a ball sorting contraption to sort plastic and steel balls into separate containers using a magnet to trigger a flipper.

I completed a module on using OpenGL, coding in C, for a helicopter flying over a fractal landscape.

I've coded in php for website front ends, in particular for accessing a hardened mysql database, a project that I completed for my University dissertation.

I have some experience hacking bash scripts together.

I am not a programmer by trade, but I have experience accross multiple operating systems and language gained throughout my time at university and for personal interest.

And not one bit of that is relevant to the discussion at hand, which is the idea that the changing of a single base pair renders DNA useless.

GoodScienceForYou wrote on Dec 15^th, 2009 at 11:16am:


If my genome contains 150 odd differences to that of my parents it is clear that it can survive 150 changes, unless you can provide a mechanism for those "changes" to have been present in the parent DNA and passed on.

Every living person on the planet is evidence that 150 changes in the genome are not fatal, they are all walking around with them.

oh_noes wrote on Dec 15^th, 2009 at 11:20am:


One piece of coding in DNA can cause severe illness. Don't you know that.  Random is certain death for the species.

There is no such thing as random in the universe. It runs on the laws of cause and effect, therefore random is fantasy.

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Not having the tools is like trying to look at bacteria with a set of jewlers magnifiers.  Until you pull out the proper tool or invent it, you have no idea the causes on things you have no way of knowing about.

There is absolutely,  ABSOLUTELY, no way for you to know the cause of any changed in DNA from the parents to the offspring in the reproductive process.  If a chemical is involved then you can see that as a cause,  BUT IT IS still a cause.

GoodScienceForYou wrote on Dec 15^th, 2009 at 11:27am:

No.
In most cases the mutations of DNA happen in non-coding regions. By the research conducted in 1999, there are 128 mutations per average per human zygote: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B8JDD-4RDPT53-F&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1137021189&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=603f2a9f85007d3f1a26d77f913cd0eb

Most of the mutations occur in the non-coding regions; In humans that's ~95% of the DNA, that's why they're neutral. But some can be beneficial, and some can be detrimental.

Why do you think, that your DNA is different from your parent's?

GoodScienceForYou wrote on Dec 15^th, 2009 at 11:45am:


I posted, at length, to explain apparent randomness. Do you just switch off and not read?

Apparently randomness is a process that appears random precisely because we do not have a complete understanding of the state of the Universe.

I can refer to the toss of a coin as being random because I am incapable of predicting it accurately. The best I can do is assign probabilities, 50:50 in the case of a coin toss. It doesn't matter that the coin toss isn't random, I can't know the starting conditions so I can treat it as such. Because I can treat it as such, I can refer to it as random.

The same applies to mutations in DNA. I can't know the starting conditions, the best I can do is give probabilities that a given base pair will get mutated. I can call it random because i don't have complete information.

This really isn't a difficult concept to grasp.