How does evolution overcome genetic hurdles?

There are two main flaws in comparing DNA to a programming language or an alphabetical script. The first is that all possible DNA sequences have potential meaning, whereas many combinations of letters do not have meaning in the others. Secondly, the programming, or a written message, characteristically has a very specific purpose. The DNA sequence merely has to hit the goal of “survive and reproduce”. Once a working sequence is present, variations on that sequence will be produce, because DNA copying is not perfect. But because they start from a working sequence, the chance that they do something useful is much better than the chances for a random sequence to something useful. The odds that a randomly selected electron in the universe is in your device, transmitting this message, is extremely low, but that does not show that the message does not exist. It does mean that the message is not produced by random selection of electrons. Natural selection has many non-random aspects, including variations in DNA error checking both within and between organisms. For example, the whole point of the variable regions of antibody genes is to mutate rapidly in the hopes of hitting on a match for any incoming pathogen.

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