At least in part to deal with such
points, Eigen more recently
pointed out that each biological genome is not a single sequence of bases on DNA (a unique «
point in sequence space») but rather a fairly large number of variant sequences that have quite similar — even indistinguishable — biological
functions.11 b, 11 c Most of these functionally similar sequences differ from the «wild - type» sequence in only one or a
few locations, but some have fairly large discrepancies.
The results came in last year and were not encouraging: In two shorter trials, heart
function improved by a
few percentage
points or not
at all, and one longer study found a slight but temporary benefit.