How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology by Philip Ball
Everything you thought you knew about biology is wrong - or at least inadequate to explain how things work. Biology had drifted towards a "genetic determinism" approach. It was assumed that genes were like computer programs. If we understood the genes we could understand everything. We could just manipulate the "code" to get any desire we wanted. However, biology is not that deterministic.
It was thought that DNA is primarily for coding proteins. Non-coding DNA was seen as "junk" that may have held a legacy purpose, but is not useful today. However, it is not that simple. Much of that non-coding DNA has distinct purposes that define how organisms develop and behave.
In general, genes are probabilistic, not deterministic. There are many factors in play. Cells are often guided by neighboring cells in their behavior. Epigenetics, neighboring genes and environmental conditions all can play a role in development. When comparing life to computers, it is much more like a learning model than a predefined algorithm. Or perhaps we could consider it more like the development of an unplanned city vs. central planning. There is simply a lot we don't understand and probably a lot more "chance" involved than we have suspected.
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