Yesterday I discovered an online game called Phylo. No, it isn’t about Greek pastry dough. It has more to do with phylogenetics.
Phylogenetics is the study of how living things are related to each other. It takes advantage of the fact that DNA changes slowly over time. So the more distantly related two things are, the less DNA they will share.
You can also learn which bits of DNA are important for life (or good health) by seeing which ones stay pretty constant between various animals. Since these don’t change, they are probably being used for something. And if they get changed in people who have a disease, then they may be involved in that disease.
This is what Phylo is based on. In the game, you are trying to line up the DNA sequences of various animals to figure out which DNA is important and which isn’t. This is a lot harder than it sounds.
While DNA changes slowly, we’re dealing with some pretty long spans of time since two animals shared a common ancestor (i.e. had the same DNA). This means that the DNA can start to look pretty different.