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Thanks, this makes sense.

I think my reduction and your quibble is really a matter of semantics. It's true that the genome doesn't contain explicit coordinates for every feature of every cell. But at the same time, if you start with the same DNA, you get the same morphogenesis, and if you start with different DNA, you get different morphogenesis, so i would say the morphogenesis is very much encoded in the DNA. It's just that it's in a highly compressed representation, and the decompression machinery includes the laws of physics!



Yeah sounds like we are both expressing the same idea.

I’m usually pretty touchy about software analogies for biology but “decompression machinery includes the laws of physics” is a good way to frame it.


> if you start with the same DNA, you get the same morphogenesis

Then how do you explain their creation of xenobots using only frog DNA?

That was the whole point of the experiment - to disprove your statement.

https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/team-builds-first-living-robot...


Okay, same DNA in the same context then. That experiment doesn't disprove it in the slightest. Indeed, the fact that the experiment is repeatable confirms it.




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