These two chromosomes are different enough physically for sperm cells to be separated out according to whether they carry sex chromosomes for a boy or a girl, making it possible to choose the sex of your child. That's just a clue to the meanings locked up in the genome. Watching movies of chromosome pairs dividing, I remember being astonished by the precision and purposefulness of the chromosomes' movements as they swung together, divided, and then swung apart , all in perfect unison, as two new sets of chromosomes. I felt I was seeing the kind of purposive behavior you get in adult animals, way down at the level of molecules. What the genome codes for The genome codes not just for proteins, but also for subtle ways we differ.
Children obviously get some aspects of human nature from their parents.
A distinctive hair color, for example, might pop out at intervals down through successive generations. Hemophilia turned out to be coded for by a individual genes, one small stretches of the genome. Other examples include whether or not you experience certain chemicals as having a smell. Conscious moods and behaviors, such as worrying, can be the result of having particular genes, too. So by studying genes we might be able to figure out where a lot of important meanings come from.