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Gould Op-Ed: Genes' Emergent Properties Matters

Posted by Hemos on from the interesting-take-on-things dept.

A reader writes "The New York Times has an op-ed piece in Monday's paper about the smaller-than-expected number of genes in the human genome (around 30,000 genes, versus 19,000 for a simple roundworm and the 100,000+ that were expected). With so few genes, it may be the case that the emergent properties of the combinations of genes, as much as the genes themselves, are contributing to our complexity. I suppose the honchos at Santa Fe Institute are rewriting their grant proposals already."

4 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Learn from chaos theory! by Swordfish · · Score: 5

    I've been listening to this stuff about the lower-than-expected number of genes for a while now, and it is surprising to me that no one has mentioned the less of chaos theory. Chaos theory is the study of systems which have very simple equations of motion, but which have an extremely compilcated behaviour.

    So... even quite a simple creature, such as an insect, can have very complex behaviour, even with simple equations of motion. So it's really the system structure that matters, not the number of parameters in the system specification.

    And remember that computers are very simple indeed. They're just interconnected switches and things. But the program loaded into the hardware makes it complex. So the complexity of human beings comes from the ability to load programs and execute them.

  2. Explanation of All your base are belong to us. by PD · · Score: 5

    It seems that it's a joke based on a bad Japanse to English translation. This should help you out a bit. It's damn funny.

    http://rmitz.org/AYB3.swf

    --
    If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
  3. Re:Where is the rest of the information? by pohl · · Score: 5
    I really can't see that a human is only half again as complex as a roundworm!

    But with each additional gene, the number of interactions between its expression and the expressions of other genes rises exponentially, doesn't it? If I'm surprised by anything, it's that people actually thought there might be a "gene for foo".

    --

    The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...

  4. Of course it is ! by Thomas+Miconi · · Score: 5

    "Emergent properties of the combination of genes" have been known for decades to be the dominant factor in genotype-to-phenotype translation. AI computer scientists working on genetic algorithms have called this epistasis, borrowing the word from biology (see here), and giving it a slightly broader meaning:

    "You have epistasis when the expression of a given gene has a significant effect on the expression of other genes, thereby inducing the fact that a genotype of N genes cannot be analyzed by observing the effect of each gene separately". The unwritten corollary being: "which is quite a pain in the ass".

    Genetic algorithms work best (in comparison to other methods) when the problem space is highly-yet-not-too-highly epistatic. See this page for extensive information, or just try a Google search.