Many of us think that DNA is like a light switch; you have a particular sequence of base pairs or a particular chromosome, and these directly cause a large change in biological functioning. But the truth is that any given gene can be up or downregulated through a dizzying array of biochemical “dimmer switches” that finely control how much that particular gene is expressed. Understanding how this works is key to answering questions like “How does a sequence of base pairs in DNA become a whole organism?” and “Why is it that every cell has the same DNA sequence but different function?”. We’ll chat about the advances in computing needed to answer these questions, the importance of gene expression in disease, and how this science can help us understand social issues better too.