genes as language. language as genes.

I read in Dawkins (c. 1984) that he did not think language was much like genes.
Since languages heavily cross-contaminate.
Whereas species clearly nestle discretely with no co-convergence between lineages.
At least only by phenotype, never by genotype.
Well, we learned something new in the past year.
The analogy holds up well. Not since language is more like genetic lineages.
But because genetic lineages are more like languages.

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Estimates range from 3 – 8 % of the human genome as being comprised of sections of viral DNA. These and other parasitic, self-replicating pieces of nucleic acids have evolved with us over millions of years after being inserted into our DNA by the viruses that infected our ancestors.
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So our DNA is heavily compromised.
In fact, without special particles to negate expression of these viral sections, the expression of those viral segments will quickly kill us.

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20 Amino acids, their single-letter data-base codes (SLC), and their corresponding DNA codons


Amino Acid

SLC
DNA codons

Isoleucine

ATT, ATC, ATA

Leucine
L

CTT, CTC, CTA, CTG, TTA, TTG
Valine
V

Stop codons Stop TAA, TAG, TGA
In this table, the twenty amino acids found in proteins are listed, along with the single-letter code used to represent these amino acids in protein data bases. The DNA codons representing each amino acid are also listed. All 64 possible 3-letter combinations of the DNA coding units T, C, A and G are used either to encode one of these amino acids or as one of the three stop codons that signals the end of a sequence. While DNA can be decoded unambiguously, it is not possible to predict a DNA sequence from its protein sequence. Because most amino acids have multiple codons, a number of possible DNA sequences might represent the same protein sequence.
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D: so we have 3 letter symbols to represent chemicals.
3 letters in a row comprise an amino acid.
The amino acids, in turn, are strung together to form peptides and then polypeptides.

Phonemes, syllables, words, sentences!

Up to six homophones (words).
Hmm.
Neat.