Human DNA is a "robust language." Everything is encoded redundantly, and most features "express" through multiple small, additive gates (e.g. changing one bit of your DNA will never take your hair all the way from blonde to black, only make it slightly lighter or darker.) We could make a programming language that works similarly, though it would likely be very unintuitive.
Not everything is encoded redundantly. Try changing CGA to TGA in one of the exons of PAX6. In humans, this change will result in aniridia, the lack of an iris, an unstable corneal epithelium, and other problems. This is just one example, the one I'm familiar with. There are many other single nucleotide polymorphisms that can cause big changes.
Comments
Human DNA is a "robust language." Everything is encoded redundantly, and most features "express" through multiple small, additive gates (e.g. changing one bit of your DNA will never take your hair all the way from blonde to black, only make it slightly lighter or darker.) We could make a programming language that works similarly, though it would likely be very unintuitive.
Not everything is encoded redundantly. Try changing CGA to TGA in one of the exons of PAX6. In humans, this change will result in aniridia, the lack of an iris, an unstable corneal epithelium, and other problems. This is just one example, the one I'm familiar with. There are many other single nucleotide polymorphisms that can cause big changes.
DNA also has lots of garbage: genes that aren't expressed and are just along for the ride.