butter/lesser

[OhhWatALoser]

damn, now i looked it up, and im stunned to realize that unlike any other science, biology actually seems to have botched the definitions of "same" and "different".

they talk about different forms of the same gene.

my blunt response would be: if its necessary, ditch the word "gene" and instead use the word "form". different forms of the same gene with different genetic code and different results, it just blows my mind.

so, in strict biology talk, if one BP has a gene, and a second BP has a mutated, broken version of the gene that does not work, they still both have the same gene, even when the genetic code is clearly different and one is working and the other is not? Yeah a broken ferrari and a working ferrari are both ferraris, but i cannot see how they are the same. one drives, the other doesnt.

and yes, DNA is not binary, its in base 4. but its still digital and copied with very high fidelity across generations. Binary code of ones and zeros, base 4 code of CGAT, base 10 code in the form of the numbers we use, ASCII base 128 code, basically all the same. everything can be perfectly translated into everything else. Epigenetics makes things more complicated but doesnt change the code, for me epigenetics is analogous to a write-protected harddrive in a computer where certain tasks can be active or inactive, different data can be in use or not in use.

form = variation

Gene has it's definition changed as we learn more about genetics, but the way I see it used most is basically a gene sits somewhere on a chromosome, the same gene gets paired up with it on the matching chromosome. They are both the same gene, however can have many different variations. The mutant variations are what we are interested in

I guess you could spin it that way :p but I see it more as taking a single bit and changing the 1 to a decimal point number