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Not a surprise, not a challenge
Submitted by TheBrummell (not verified) on Thu, 2007-06-14 07:27.
The findings challenge the traditional view of our genetic blueprint as a tidy collection of independent genes, pointing instead to a complex network in which genes, along with regulatory elements and other types of DNA sequences that do not code for proteins, interact in overlapping ways not yet fully understood.
1. That "traditional view" is nothing like it - no practicing biologist has regarded the genome "as a tidy collection of independent genes" for decades, if any ever did. Complexity is the most obvious feature of biological systems, and nobody has ever accused a living organism of being "tidy"
2. The blueprint analogy is false and irritating. There is NO 1-to-1 mapping of genes to anatomy in living organisms - there is no gene for a nose, or for two legs, or for five fingers, or for any other morphological feature. A much better analogy is that of a recipe - altering or ommitting the sugar from a cake recipe, for example, does not result in a cake missing 1/4 of its surface, rather the result is a cake that tastes different but is still recognisably a cake.
3. The only part of that sentence that makes sense is the last phrase, about these features not yet being fully understood. Of course we don't fully understand genetics or genomics! Did somebody tell you we did?
Did two different people write this article, one (scientifically illiterate) the first paragraph, the other the rest? Everything after the first paragraph is excellent, so what's with the trash introductory paragraph?

