Sorting through DNA

An Anonymous Coward sent in this note: "There's an interesting article at Forbes.com discussing the issues scientists are finding in analyzing and sorting the DNA info now that it's been sequenced. It seems that the functional and useless DNA is all mixed up together. I like this line: "If you want an analogy, think Microsoft Windows: a big kluge of code containing long stretches of old subroutines and dormant bugs and all sorts of other stuff left over from past generations. It shouldn't work, but usually it does.""

Comments

The Red-Green Analogy.

[Mossfoot]

This doesn't really surprise me, and here's why.

When I took a History of Science course in university, we eventually got to Darwin, and here's how he described evolution. But first of all, I hope you guys know what the Red-Green Show is. If you don't, hopefully you'll still get the idea.

People tend to think of the human body to be like something built by Bob Vila. When there is a percieved need (a new table for the house, for example), it is done from scratch, it is something crafted, measured, and precicely built from an expert resevoir of knowledge. This is not the case. It is much more like Red-Green, where the Handyman has a percieved need, and instead he looks around in his room full of junk and figures out what he can duct-tape together to make a passable subsitute.

So it surprises me little that the DNA is such a mess, we're just duct taping together all the useful junk in our geneitc code.