Genes and Subroutines

(On Reading The Mouse's Tale, from Richard Dawkins The Ancestor's Tale)

The number of genes in a man or a mouse is about 30,000. This is not a tiny number, but to a programmer it seems way too small to specify the program for something as complicated as a man (or a mouse). Each gene specifies one protein, and if you think of each gene as specifying one instruction to the cellular "computer," 30k is not many. How many lines of code are there in Microsoft Office? Millions? Is MS Office 30 (or a hundred or a thousand) times as complicated as a mouse?

The thought does give a certain resonance to the idea of "bloatware," but even if you allow that maybe Bill's guys don't exactly make a fetish of efficiency, it still looks incongruous. Dawkins says that the path to understanding is to consider each gene as a subroutine, and that the real power of the cell is exercised in the sequence in which these subroutines are called.

To a first approximation, man and mouse have the same genes = subroutines. Dawkins pretty much leaves it at that, but to a programmer that doesn't exactly settle the matter. After all, the determination of the sequence of subroutine calls is another program, or subroutine, and it has to be specified too, one protein at a time. I can't really shed any light on this question, except to note that, evidently, genomes mouse and man have achieved fantastic reusability.

Anybody have a better idea?

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