This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. This lecture in the series

The Language of the Genes given by Steve Jones was originally broadcast in 1991. By the time

you've finished listening to this talk, you'll be a different person. I don't mean by this

that your views about life, or even about genes, will be modified, although perhaps they may.

What I have in mind is simpler.

In the next half hour or so, your genes and your life will be changed by mutation, by errors in your personal genetic message.

Mutation, change, is happening all the time within ourselves and over the generations.

We're constantly being corrupted by it.

All religions share the idea that humanity is in decline, a decayed remnant to what was once

perfect, and that it must be returned to a higher plane by a process of salvation, of starting again from scratch.

This lecture is about genetic change, the perpetuation of error, and how progress can emerge from decay.

Mutation is at the heart of human experience. It leads to old age and death, but also to sex, to rebirth and to evolution.

Mutation has within itself the answer to the universal question of faith, our own decline but humanity's salvation.

The first life and the first genes appeared 3,000 million years ago as short strings of molecules capable

of making rough copies of themselves. At a reckless guess, the original molecule in life's first

course, the primeval soup, has passed through 3,000 million ancestors before ending up in you

or me, or in a chimp or an oak tree.

The message from our ancestors, coded in our genes, is liable to be garbled during transmission.

When I was a boy, I was greatly amused by the tale of the order given down the line of command to soldiers in the trenches.

Send reinforcements we're going to advance, change to, send three and fourpence,

we're going to a dance as it passed from man to man.

This simple tale illustrates mutation and evolution.

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