genes code for a response to an environment"

No they don't. Genes code for amino acid sequences in the manufacture of proteins in cells. Let's not get carried away.

Genes only code for amino acid sequences in the environment of a cell with those amino acids avaiilable ANSD all the other stuff one would expect - e.g., a response to an environment.

That is why your DNA has you make kneecaps after you start walking, not before. It codes for bones to be built up if there is gravity, and resorbed if there isn't any gravity. And so on. 'Tain't as simple as "amino acid sequences" - although that is the small picture. What sequences when is where the response to the environment comes in. That's why you make eyeball proteins in your eyeball environment, dn not elsewhere, and kneecap proteins in your knee-of-a-walking-person-with-gravity-around,, and not otherwise.

That is the key to embryology, which is the key to evolution. The only thing actually tinkered with is the embryology - a little more here, a little less there, and the fish is now a person. But we still go through the fish stage to get to the proper environment to grow a person.

I wonder what the anti-choice people would think of the idea that, at the fetal age you normally abort if you're going to abort a pregnancy, that fetus or probably embryo is actually a fish, not a person - gills etc. That's my new bumper sticker to counter the people who say It isn't a choice, it's a child - It isn't a child at 5 weeks post-conception, it's a fish. Darwin fish! Hee hee!

I'm interested in josep's age, too.