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To: tortoise
...genomes of higher order animals are very dirty and even at our primitive level of genomics capability it is becoming clear that some of our genes are only a poor fit for our species.

There was a time when researchers noted large chromosomal deletion mutations in certain individuals without apparent deleterious effects. So they said, look, those regions of the chromosome must be junk. Now we have these knockout mice. And you can knock out genes critical for development and critical for cellular functions. And about a third of these mice survive without deleterious effect. So, this "very dirty" code is actually amazingly degenerate. I wish my budget had that much slush.

There's room for improvement, but not always in the ways we see as obvious. Simple things like a functional L-GLO gene for vitamin C would be handy. Improvements to senses, the brain, lifespan etc. can easily be imagined but we'd end up with a different creature (evolveture) entirely.

185 posted on 01/08/2002 1:03:14 PM PST by Nebullis
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To: Nebullis
evolveture

I like that! (But I suspect you're going to hear it from the "creature" fans now.)

186 posted on 01/08/2002 1:07:16 PM PST by VadeRetro
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