things to think about

In which Dawkins discusses further what happens during replication, how best to define a ‘gene’ or ‘chromosome’ and how inheritance and selection works.

p28: The structure of a cistron, with its beginning and end markers, will be familiar to anyone who’s studied prehistoric computing theory: files were often stored on magnetic tape in this way, one after another with beginning and end delimiters. Not that I think this observation is any more relevant than that; there’s a limited number of ways you can store information in a 2d array. Interesting parallel though.

p29: If the whole purpose of an organism is to preserve the genetic units held within it, why do we see a selection for sexual reproduction, complete with the crossing over that potentially breaks up and corrupts those genetic units?

p45: If the only purpose of DNA is to survive, then surely the ‘large fraction [which] is never translated into protein’ (and therefore useless to its host organism), is simply explained by its own existence?

Overall notes:

• Genes which give their host a survival advantage are more likely to survive themselves.

Conversely

• Genes which give their host a disadvantage are more likely to die out with their host

At least, those which manifest before reproduction.

• Tendency when we die when we do caused by accumulation in the gene pool of genes which cause us to die at around 80? What if we only reproduced after (say) 60?

Note on review: Doesn’t reproduction as it stands now seem a very inefficient way of propagating a gene line? Especially in humans: it takes years to get to sexual maturity, then a period of fertility followed by a longish period of comparatively low reproductive value, especially when you factor in the menopause. Am I missing something here?