Two decades later, we know that little of the sort has happened.[1] And for good reason: genes are not, in fact, life’s language, any more than a scrambled alphabet or a randomly arranged dictionary is a Shakespeare play, or a musical scale is equivalent to a John Coltrane solo. For letters or words to become language, they must be arranged, enunciated, inflected, punctuated with pauses, EMPHASIZED or softened. Like all building blocks, genes help make up the language of existence, but it is through the workings of epigenetics that they are activated, accented, or quieted. The mechanisms of
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