A Program in DNA?
The idea of a genetic program leads a double life. It used often, phrase is used loosely in many biology articles: eg. See Liu and Plikus (2025) for a recent example of both “programs” and “blueprints” being used to describe control over development. When examined closely, however, it is widely regarded as a misleading metaphor that pumps up the importance of genes.
Critics are correct that program are correct that the use of the phrase can be misleading. Claims they pbrogram for building the organism are, for example, However, critis are too quick to dismiss the idea of a genetic program altogether. I have argued these critiques have a limited view of what programs are, and there is a way of understanding the idea of a genetic program that avoids the problems raised by critics. More recently, XXX has said.
Here, I further these by constructing a programming language that captures the essential features of a genetic program. This section introduces a programming language specifically designed to mimic gene regulation. Rather, in this and then next few sections, I use the models to show how we can make sense of DNA encoding a program for cellular cognition.