Hi Peter

> If this thread is boring, please advise me and
> I'll drop it.

Not boring, but a bit far from the mainstream.  I'm a geneticist (and talk about genes all the time!), and wonder if I've missed something important when you said:

> But now it appears that the DNA is about as
> decipherable as your hard drive.  The information
> is all there, but scattered about in fragments,
> and without good a good indexing system, it would
> be utterly useless. 

Here you are in danger of giving the wrong impression.  Genes are complex entities, and it isn't always easy to define where one begins and ends.  But some parts of the gene, the main bits, are very clear.  'ATG' says 'start here' then comes the code in triplets until the stop signal comes along.  Of course there are complications, the introns that get snipped out, the promotor ahead of the main gene where various controlling elements have their say, micro-RNAs that make the gene products quickly labile ... but .... the gene is still a gene isn't it?  The genome isn't like a badly defragmented disk, it is composed of discrete entities that can be cut out, tinkered with, and put back again, should you have a mind to do so and a regulatory system that lets you.  There are complex controls over the expression of most genes, but that was always recognised as an important part of the story.  It is just that now we are getting some idea of just how complex.

all the best

Gavin

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