A Genetic Entropy Analogy

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@Giltil

First, it comes from the observation that there is no example of an organism with complex ontogeny having a low ratio of non protein coding to protein coding DNA (let’s call R this ratio), whereas there are many examples of organisms with simpler ontogeny having a low R.

This pufferfish with it’s 400 Mbp genome laughs at that statement:

@Giltil

Secondly, isn’t perfectly logical to hypothesize that organisms with complex ontogeny requiring myriads of cell fate decisions such as humans also require much more regulatory sequences than organisms requiring much less cell fate decisions such as C. Elegans?

Sure, it is logical to to posit that more regulatory programming is required to specify more diverse cellular behavior, and that increased programming would require more storage space.
But notice that merely predicts a requirement in terms of relative size (A requires more than B), it doesn’t predict an absolute value (A requires 3Gbp whereas B only requires 1Gbp) and it completely fails to explain the observed variance within and between different clades.