From Alan Jenyon
Our genome “software” is still at version 1.x, never having had the benefit of a rewrite. Evolved from the last universal common ancestor, it contains programming remnants from countless predecessors (15 September, p 30).
If we ever succeed in decoding the genome software as some hope, for example, via the ENCODE project (8 September, p 40), it will turn out to be the most appalling example of spaghetti programming – software with a twisted and tangled flow almost impossible to unravel and even harder to debug. I confidently predict the weeping of strong men.
Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire, UK
