Moth



Blackwell Publishing

Is it misleading to see DNA as a blueprint for the organism?

"DNA is commonly referred to in textbooks of molecular biology as the "blueprint" for an organism. I would rather call it a recipe or like a computer program.

The difference between a blueprint and a recipe is that a blueprint is reversable, and a recipe is not. If you have a house and you have lost the blueprint you can reconstruct the blueprint by taking measurements, but if you have got a well prepared dish in a great restaurant you may enjoy the dish and you may dissect it and look at it in every detail but you cannot reconstruct the recipe."

Richard Dawkins

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