How Many Genes Do Cells Need? Maybe Almost All of Them
Hypothesis: it’s not so much the <i>content</i> of the genes that’s brittle, as that there are very few proteins as “smart” in how they walk the genome as CRISPR is (and even it’s no Einstein.)<p>There are likely cellular genetic repair mechanisms—especially in “small” genebases that don’t use fancy tricks like methylation&#x2F;acetylation—which “hardcode” assumptions about gene number, gene size, positions of important proteins, etc.<p>Just because DNA itself is a robust data-structure (with features like start-stop tags, commented sections, etc.) doesn’t mean that all the algorithms (proteins) that have evolved to utilize that data-structure query or mutate it in equally-robust ways.<p>Imagine a codebase started off by a brilliant and strict engineer... and then followed on by a million forks-of-forks-of-forks, all done by average Joes just “scratching their own itch.” That’s the type of software encoded in 99% of the DNA on Earth. The codebases where “every line counts” and has been carefully selected for are far fewer—mitochondria, certainly, but i hesitate to name any other clear candidate.