The genome was once thought to be just the blueprint for a living organism, like a combination of the architect's plan for a building and the builder's list of supplies. It specified the parts, the building blocks, and, somehow, the design of the whole, the way in which they are to be put together.

We have 26,000 genes. But a blind, millimetre-long roundworm with only 959 cells in total already has over 19,000.

The human genome contains so much data that, it has been calculated, it would fill 43 volumes of Webster's International Dictionary.

Iain McGilchrist Quotes