dkomo  wrote or quoted:
> Guy Hoelzer wrote:
> > Tijmen Tieleman at nickprillewits{at}yahoo.com wrote on 8/6/04 11:23 AM:

> >>I have always been told that DNA describes exactly how to build a (say
> >>human) body.  [snip]
> > 
> > I am afraid that you have been repeatedly lied to.  There is no question
> > about the falsehood of your statement.  The genome does not contain a
> > description of a body at all [...]

> > Much, perhaps the vast majority, of the information needed for successful
> > embryonic development resides in other aspects of the egg's cellular
> > machinery or in the external environment.  It is na?ve to think that there
> > is a blueprint somewhere that is somehow referenced during the construction
> > of a complex organism.
> 
> I saw on the news today that the annual Twins Convention took place in 
> Twinsburg, Ohio (did I get that right?).
> 
> If DNA doesn't closely encode the final body, how do you explain 
> identical twins?  Those twins shown on the news looked eerily identical. 

As an experiment I put the eggs of two identical twins in different 
envrionments from a young age - and watched to see how they developed.

I included the entire egg cell - along with all its cytoplasmic
machinery - not just the DNA.

I left one egg implanted in its mother's womb.

I took the other egg to mars, and attached it to the side of a rock there.

As a brief summary, my results were that the resulting phenotypes appeared 
to be quite different - on *all* the measures I took into consideration.

I conclude that extra-cellular environmental influences are indeed
highly significant during the development of complex organisms.
-- 
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 * RgateImp.MoonDog.BBS at 8/10/04 6:26:51 AM