Jocks versus geeks--the downside of genius?
Genomes seem to change relatively steadily through evolution, with an accumulation of mutations which have such a linear relationship to elapsed time that we can use them as a fairly reliable “molecular clock”. But because some mutations matter more than others and interact with each other in complex ways, the gross appearance and behaviour of species—the phenotype—can differ in quite spectacular ways even between closely related species. The genotype and phenotype are connected by layers of intermediate phenotype, including the characteristics of the transcriptomes, proteomes, and metabolomes of each tissue of an organism's body. It's by filtration through this information network that the consequences of genomic differences become manifest in the whole organism.
