In 2001, the Human Genome Project gave us an almost complete draft of the 3 billion letters in our DNA. We joined an elite club of species with their genome sequences, one that is growing with every passing month.

These genomes contain the information necessary for building their respective owners, but it’s information that we still struggle to parse. To date, no one can take the code from an organism’s genes and predict all the details of its shape, behaviour, development, physiology—the collection of traits known as its phenotype. And yet, the basis of those details are there, all captured in stretches of As, Cs, Gs and Ts. “Cells know pretty reliably how to do this,” says Leonid