— Eörs Szathmáry and John Maynard Smith "The Major Evolutionary Transitions," Nature 374 (1995): pp.227-232A central idea in contemporary biology is that of information. Developmental biology can be seen as the study of how information in the genome is translated into adult structure, and evolutionary biology of how the information came to be there in the first place.
The inheritance of traits is determined by genes: long stretches of DNA that are passed down from generation to generation. Usually, genes consist of a coding part and a non-coding regulatory part. The coding part of the gene determines the functional output, whereas the non-coding portion contains switches and units that determine when, where and how much of the functional output should be generated. Point-mutations in the coding part are predominantly neutral or slightly detrimental genetic noise that accumulates in the genome, whereas point-mutations in the regulatory part of DNA units can induce variation with respect to the amount of output. Previously, in part 2, I argued that created kinds were frontloaded with baranomes: that is, pluripotent genomes with an ability to induce variation from within. The output of (morpho)genetic algorithms present in the baranome can readily be modulated by variation-inducing genetic elements (VIGEs). VIGEs are frontloaded genetic elements normally referred to as endogenous retroviruses, insertion sequences, LINEs, SINEs, microsatellites, transposons, insertion sequences, and the like. In the present report, these transposable and repetitive DNA sequences are redefined as VIGEs, which solves the RNA virus paradox. The (morpho)genetic algorithms were designed in such way that VIGEs easily integrated into it and became a part of it, hence making the program explicit.
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