Work on ontologies and lexical semantics has long been aware of different subsumption relations among concepts that are lexically encoded as nouns (Gangemi et al. 2001, 2002; Guarino and Welty 2001). An important distinction is that between TYPES and ROLES (Guarino and Welty 2002; Pustejovsky 1995). For example, poodle and Welsh corgi are TYPES of dog, while pet, hunting dog, guard dog, and wor...

This article was written before i knew any biology. It has a lot of misconceptions about how things work, and uses all the wrong vocabulary. Please at least read "non-coding region" every time i wrote "introns". Despite the embarassment, i leave this online for historical purposes only. Then again, some ideas are worth a thought, knowing that it was all theoretical and abstract, prior to any bi...