MONKEYS, DNA & A BOOK REVIEW

On a Bridge Somewhere - Sitka, I think.

Seems pretty scary to me

Back in the middle Holocene when I was in high school I recall a math teacher* trying to explain randomness.  Or maybe it was somebody else explaining Congress, I don’t absolutely know.  Anyway, what I remember is the statement that “if a monkey sat and randomly pushed keys on a typewriter, eventually he would write Hamlet.”  Well, maybe.  To put it in modern terms, if one million monkeys sat at one million computer keyboards and whacked away randomly, eventually they would write today’s version of the NY Times.

But we need a new copy, every day.  That would require an editor to scan this random output, select portions that happened to be interesting – and maybe even true – extract them and send them to the press room. 

So what does this have to do with anything?  Well, I am reading Nessa Carey’s new book, on “Junk DNA”.  This stuff no longer is “junk”, rather, it is recognized to perform myriad functions, often involving turning genes on and off.  As Dr. Carey explains it, these regulatory processes are complicated.  Very complicated.  Needlessly complicated.  It is as if a million monkeys banged away at the genetic code, turning out random garbage with an occasional bit of useful code imbedded in it.  Then, I guess, natural selection acts the part of the NY Times editor and preserves what works.  The result isn’t pretty, but we are here, and we function – most of the time.  No “Intelligent Designer” could come up with something this messy.

This blog has been inspired by my efforts – now under way for three weeks – to wrap my painfully finite brain around Dr. Carey’s concepts.  It hasn’t been easy, and I still have 88 pages more to tackle.  Regretfully, I have to warn you all that, if you want to read this book and get anything out of it you must: (1) read her first book, which was much easier and much more entertaining, (2) have absorbed at least as much molecular biology as I have thrown at you in this blog, and (3) have lots of time on your hands.  Sorrowfully, I am going to have to enter this book in my Cancer Wannabe’s Library:

http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-cancer-researcher-wannabes-bookshelf.html

 with a grade of B.  I guess I am asking too much when I seek a book that imparts useful knowledge about complicated processes but requires only minimal mental exertion.  Yeah, that’s for sure.

*I am fairly certain that the math teacher was Mr. Tierney.  Mr. Tierney once became fed up with my mouthing off to the extent that he literally tossed me into the hall.  Mr. Tierney was a weight lifter, and I was a scrawny little twerp.