CRISPR gets a lot of press because it seems to give biologists exactly what they've always wanted - a tool to mess with the DNA - to alter the hardware, i.e. move around transistors
Biologists love CRISPR because they are hardware people - that's how they were trained, that's how they think, and there are millions of them all thinking the same thing, yearning for the same.
Then there are the others who think DNA is software, the genes themselves are "merely" the CPU. For them, the hype around CRISPR is a distraction, and it only sets back scientific progress as it keeps channeling the focus and attention to the mere physical act of cutting pasting DNA as if that would ever explain anything.
In a nutshell, genes are probably not that important, it is the repetitive and seemingly senseless elements in between then that regulate the individual pieces. For an analogy think about how you can run radically different software of the same hardware.
See: "A 21st century view of evolution: genome system architecture, repetitive DNA, and natural genetic engineering"
Yes, but genes in and of themselves explain very little in terms of the overall functioning of a cell. The process that determines if and when a gene gets expressed is probably as important as the gene itself.
Yes, other genes. Transcription factors. Methylation. DNA accessibility. All determined by proteins which are in-turn determined by genes. Genes determine expression.
Or it's like Mask ROM, but you can edit it... sometimes. Oh and it can self-replicate, like software. But the replicates can form 3D structures, so not exactly like software. And they can be physically moved.
The software/hardware paradigms don't fit exactly. They are useful is certain situations. The most useful of these is that DNA can be described as a linear sequence of a discrete set of symbols (to a first approximation).
DNA is neither hardware nor software, living organisms aren't computers. Bad analogies are going to frame your thinking and may prevent better understanding. They'll also set you up for fruitless discussions with people who don't like the analogy.
Conflating genes and DNA is your first mistake. Also, DNA is not the hardware, that would be the proteins responsible for executing on the software that is DNA.
First and foremost "genes" do not exist. Genes are a fuzzy concept that people pass around and when talking about DNA. Because of the fuzziness, everyone can claim that genes do what they think they do since they are not constrained by a definition.
DNA is a physical thing, whereas genes are underdefined concepts on top of DNA. Every single thing people call a gene has a different name as well. What someone calls gene might be a protein, might be a transcript, might be the superset of all coding exons of a family of transcripts and so on ... so what is a gene then? I have come to believe that "gene" is a word everyone likes to us yet very few if any understand.
Find any definition of gene and it is either quite circuitous or wrong. For example take the Wikipedia page for gene. The definition devolves into that of a primary transcript. In reality transcripts code for molecules, and multiple transcripts may be labeled as the same gene. Note how genes do not actually exist in the same way as transcript do... the wikipedia page never makes it clear that a gene is a mere label and grouping of the existing transcripts.
Fundamentally, of course, the hardware/software are a metaphor - it does not really work as a hardware nor software.
The point I was making is that the information processing that takes place on DNA is what differentiates the different life forms, not the actual base identity.
Genes certainly do exist. Your cells are not capable of conceptualizing ideas. They need to know where to begin and end transcription and translation to produce specific protein in response to stimuli. Therefore, genes exist as discrete, physiological things.
1. DNA is the hardware
2. DNA is the software
CRISPR gets a lot of press because it seems to give biologists exactly what they've always wanted - a tool to mess with the DNA - to alter the hardware, i.e. move around transistors
Biologists love CRISPR because they are hardware people - that's how they were trained, that's how they think, and there are millions of them all thinking the same thing, yearning for the same.
Then there are the others who think DNA is software, the genes themselves are "merely" the CPU. For them, the hype around CRISPR is a distraction, and it only sets back scientific progress as it keeps channeling the focus and attention to the mere physical act of cutting pasting DNA as if that would ever explain anything.
In a nutshell, genes are probably not that important, it is the repetitive and seemingly senseless elements in between then that regulate the individual pieces. For an analogy think about how you can run radically different software of the same hardware.
See: "A 21st century view of evolution: genome system architecture, repetitive DNA, and natural genetic engineering"
http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/Shapiro.2005.Gene.pdf