The genome is regarded today as blueprint of the organism.
Despite the great hopes in the “Book of Life” it turned out to be no more
intelligent than a telephone directory or better the yellow pages, which
tell you who is doing what but fail to reveal how it is done.
Unfortunately the Book of Life does not indicate how the complexity of
the organism is generated. Biologists distinguish therefore between two
realms: genetics or the blueprint, and epigenesis, where complexity emerges.
While the first may be investigated by reduction, epigenesis can be understood
only phenomenologically (which is explained in the other thread).
All this is bad for business, which had embraced Book-of-Life-start-ups
with love. Soon disenchantment with the Book of Life drove bio-stocks downward.
In order to save their business companies created new buzzwords, e.g.,
epigenetics and proteomics. Methylation which is the hallmark of epigenetics
is a new way to control genes which is not determined by heredity. True,
it is a first step to a new level of complexity but a very modest one. Despite
the similarity of the names epigenetic and epigenesis they are utterly different
from each other.
Their difference may be illustrated with simple CA systems. A CA rule and
its initial conditions might be regarded as CA-gene. Yet once you iterate,
you are actually practicing epigenesis. Even better, you might regard the
set of CA rules as system genes, while their initial conditions are no more
than their epigenetics.
Check it here:
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