iabervon, your analogy that this new "code" is just a property of the storage medium is true, but you fail to understand why.
A nucleosome (the bundle of proteins that the authors found tend to attach to certain DNA sequences) is modified in many ways that turn the underlying DNA "on" or "off". The modifications (acetylation and methylation) are critical control points for regulation of gene expression. This is what is refered to as epigenetics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics/.
The code of acetylation and methylation that determines if the underlying DNA is able to be transcribed has been under heavy research for almost a decade. What these author's found is the "code" that determines whether a gene will be placed under this particular form of epigenetic control. Important, but certainly not in the same league as the "code" coined by Francis Crick when he determined which nucleotides translate to which amino-acids.
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A nucleosome (the bundle of proteins that the authors found tend to attach to certain DNA sequences) is modified in many ways that turn the underlying DNA "on" or "off". The modifications (acetylation and methylation) are critical control points for regulation of gene expression. This is what is refered to as epigenetics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics/.
The code of acetylation and methylation that determines if the underlying DNA is able to be transcribed has been under heavy research for almost a decade. What these author's found is the "code" that determines whether a gene will be placed under this particular form of epigenetic control. Important, but certainly not in the same league as the "code" coined by Francis Crick when he determined which nucleotides translate to which amino-acids.