The tiny blueprint of an angle  

Yes, it's amazing that they've managed to map the entire human genome, but I was even more amazed to read that there are only 3 billion base pairs. This means that my laptop could store 25 copies of my genetic code!

What's really incredible about this is that my computer is nowhere near as complex as a human body, and yet it can easily hold the so-called blueprint for human life. This is possible because DNA is more than just a blueprint. The code contained in our DNA is meaningful only in the context of human development. The proteins it encodes interact with their immediate environment, so that cells which begin exactly the same begin to differentiate, depending for instance on their orientation in the womb. So, while the information contained in those 3 billion base pairs is just a bunch of protein sequences, the entire programme of individual human development is implicitly present.

(This, by the way, is the reason I've always been skeptical of the nature-nurture debate, which doesn't seem to take into account the complexity of interaction between the two.)

MORE: It turns out they've also identified the genetic sequence of SARS, which weighs in at a measly 29,000 base pairs. But the point here is the same - the genetic code itself doesn't tell the whole story, otherwise we'd have a cure already...