The Generic Genome Is Not Directly Incoded in the Geno

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The idea there's a goal in mind as to what the ultimate face you want is a combining that with what we've just been talking about with the paramese and the plinaria. That means that wherever this goal is, that's not all by itself, incoded in the g nome either, right? It's incoded a litle bit more globally. Exactly exactly. It is absolutely not directly in the geno, i think. I think our concept of cells running on electrical devices,. i think is actually really good to to give us an intuitive understanding of this. If we understood how to re programm these target patterns, i think we would be looking at something

As a semi-outsider, it’s fun for me to watch as a new era dawns in biology: one that adds ideas from physics, big data, computer science, and information theory to the usual biological toolkit. One of the big areas of study in this burgeoning field is the relationship between the basic bioinformatic building blocks (genes and proteins) to the macroscopic organism that eventually results. That relationship is not a simple one, as we’re discovering. Standard metaphors notwithstanding, an organism is not a machine based on genetic blueprints. I talk with biologist and information scientist Michael Levin about how information and physical constraints come together to make organisms and selves.

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Michael Levin received his Ph.D. in genetics from Harvard University. He is currently Distinguished Professor and Vannevar Bush Chair in the Biology department at Tufts University, and serves as director of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. His work on left-right asymmetric body structures is on Nature’s list of 100 Milestones of Developmental Biology of the Century.

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