A point to note is that corrupting pressure to genome through adverse point mutations occurring on protein coding DNA regions are partly counterbalanced by selection happening already before birth, in form of miscarriages (late and early) and cell death or cell inefficiency during earlier stages of the germline development, even before fertilization.
Even if the value of 1 bit per generation holds true for addition of new ‘relevant’ information, the above acts as additional positive factor that only acts to negate the degrading effects of random mutations. Obviously this doesn’t matter when talking about post-birth (meaning, say, post-one-week-after-inception, assuming only a lowly value of 50% of miscarrying after that point) relevant DNA information, which thus might still be capped around 25MB. However, it’s far from obvious how and where exactly this information is embedded in the DNA.
It would seem that more relevant than protein data itself is the data that affects how and in which situations proteins express. This hints that post-birth relevant information is stored elsewhere, in regulating sections and perhaps in the ‘junk’ DNA regions. And what comes to understanding these regions, our knowledge is flimsy. The information might actually be encoded in these regions in a manner that allows for error-correction schemes not quite unlike the Von Neumann point made earlier in the comments, about computer memory error correction.
I think it’s not fitting to state that post-birth relevant information is “the meaningful DNA specifying a human”, without stretching the meaning. After all, what good is a program without understanding the interpreter and having a platform to run it on?
To sum up: Adverse point mutation pressure occuring in protein coding regions is at least partially offset in early stages of germ line, where the quantities selected upon are huge. Point mutations occuring in other regions have implications and mechanisms which are not nearly well enough understood. Thus I dont see a solid ground for the quantitative conclusions made in this article, and only some ground for the qualitative conclusions.
A point to note is that corrupting pressure to genome through adverse point mutations occurring on protein coding DNA regions are partly counterbalanced by selection happening already before birth, in form of miscarriages (late and early) and cell death or cell inefficiency during earlier stages of the germline development, even before fertilization.
Even if the value of 1 bit per generation holds true for addition of new ‘relevant’ information, the above acts as additional positive factor that only acts to negate the degrading effects of random mutations. Obviously this doesn’t matter when talking about post-birth (meaning, say, post-one-week-after-inception, assuming only a lowly value of 50% of miscarrying after that point) relevant DNA information, which thus might still be capped around 25MB. However, it’s far from obvious how and where exactly this information is embedded in the DNA.
It would seem that more relevant than protein data itself is the data that affects how and in which situations proteins express. This hints that post-birth relevant information is stored elsewhere, in regulating sections and perhaps in the ‘junk’ DNA regions. And what comes to understanding these regions, our knowledge is flimsy. The information might actually be encoded in these regions in a manner that allows for error-correction schemes not quite unlike the Von Neumann point made earlier in the comments, about computer memory error correction.
I think it’s not fitting to state that post-birth relevant information is “the meaningful DNA specifying a human”, without stretching the meaning. After all, what good is a program without understanding the interpreter and having a platform to run it on?
To sum up: Adverse point mutation pressure occuring in protein coding regions is at least partially offset in early stages of germ line, where the quantities selected upon are huge. Point mutations occuring in other regions have implications and mechanisms which are not nearly well enough understood. Thus I dont see a solid ground for the quantitative conclusions made in this article, and only some ground for the qualitative conclusions.