reply to wilson hago

[french at RUST.ZSO.DEC.COM]

> I believe children do not display the manifestations of
> ageing because they start out with essentially a clean slate of DNA (one
> of the amazing things about sexual reproduction is that the child
> possesses few of the errors of either parent). Ageing is a balance
> between DNA damage and repair. Children have the same repair rate as
> adults (say 99.95%), but less damage. Eventually, even this amazingly
> good  rate of repair can't keep up with the accumulated damage and then.
> you die.

I'm intrigued by the idea that children start out with essentially a
clean slate of DNA.  This implies that an error correction mechanism
is involved in the reproduction process and that redundant information 
is required to reconstruct a relatively error-free strand of DNA.  

Where is the redundant information stored?  Is it encoded in 
adjacent nucleotides within a single strand of DNA or are multiple
strands of DNA involved (i.e. does each parent's DNA contain a set of
error correction codes or is information from both parents DNA required
to correct errors)?