I did not say backwards. However, the rest is correct and indeed it is excellent design! It is just this kind of excellent design that allowed Visicalc, the first spreadsheet to work in just 64k of memory and which allowed Lotus to do just about everything a spreadsheet needs to do in a mere 256k. Reuse of code is an efficient and proper programming practice when resources are limited or one wants or needs concise code. Indeed, even the garbage code in MS products does reuse much code. Subroutines were created just for that purpose - to reuse code in different parts of a program. Assembly programmers took this one step further and not only reused subroutines but used different insertion points to get different operations from the same code. Some would even target entry into the middle of an instruction to get a different instruction. This is also done in the genetic code in some instances by reading the DNA codons out of phase (ie not starting at the first of the 3 bases but at the 2nd or 3rd base) thus producing a completely different instruction. To develop such a system of reusing code is completely impossible to do at random.
I did not say backwards.
IIRC, there are indeed several genes that overlap by being read forward or backward, and depending on which direction it's read, creates completely different proteins. However, the rest is correct and indeed it is excellent design! It is just this kind of excellent design that allowed Visicalc, the first spreadsheet to work in just 64k of memory and which allowed Lotus to do just about everything a spreadsheet needs to do in a mere 256k. Reuse of code is an efficient and proper programming practice when resources are limited or one wants or needs concise code.
Yes, but our genomes have 95% junk! And the amoeba that Physicist & biblewonk were discussing ~300 posts ago had 670 billion bps in its genome - 200 times more than us! I'm sure you doubt, as I do, that the amoeba has or needs 200 times as many genes as we do. That's a lot of genome space just lying around there. There is no evidence at all that genome space per se is at a premium with either amoebas or Man.
The only hard evidence we have that the genome uses up all the space available is your assertion that the 95% junk must be essential for proper gene expression, which RightWingNilla (and I believe Nebullis, too) insist you're wrong about.
And last I heard, they're the professionals who deal with this stuff every day & you & I aren't! :-)
Indeed, even the garbage code in MS products does reuse much code. Subroutines were created just for that purpose - to reuse code in different parts of a program. Assembly programmers took this one step further and not only reused subroutines but used different insertion points to get different operations from the same code. Some would even target entry into the middle of an instruction to get a different instruction. This is also done in the genetic code in some instances by reading the DNA codons out of phase (ie not starting at the first of the 3 bases but at the 2nd or 3rd base) thus producing a completely different instruction. To develop such a system of reusing code is completely impossible to do at random.
I once disassembled the Z80 code in the TRS-80's ROM, and was amazed at how ugly it was. I remember reading a book by Wayne Green where he had disassembled & analyzed the same code much more fully than I had done, and very often he would explain that they did what they did in order to save space.
However. The human genome has 95% basically unused space out there available for the Designer to write better code. Even if there are subtle functions for the 95%, it's obvious the genome could be even bigger (the amoeba isn't the only organism with a bigger total genome size than humans). The Designer surely could've come up with a more compact way of providing that hypothetical functionality.
So your argument from efficiency fails pretty badly, I'm afraid.