People say DNA is just a molecule. But in every cell of your body this molecule stores a text of 3 billion letters, with a dictionary, “start” and “stop” commands and protection from errors.
Ten screens. Every sequence here is real, from the open human genome database. Tap, change the letters and see for yourself.
The start of the hemoglobin gene. A computer stores everything as zeros and ones, 1 bit per symbol. DNA stores it in four letters, 2 bits per symbol. The same principle, only denser.
This is the real INS gene, 333 letters. The cell makes a working copy of it, and the ribosome reads it three letters at a time. Each triplet is a command: “place this amino acid”.
There are only 64 triplets of four letters. They encode 20 amino acids and a “stop” command. Tap any triplet and you will see its synonyms.
Chemistry does not force GCC to mean alanine. Translator molecules set the link, and they themselves are written in DNA in this same code. To read the dictionary, a finished dictionary is already needed.
A check in practice. Since 1978 the human insulin gene has been put into a bacterium, and it makes human insulin. Diabetes is treated with it. A program written for a human runs in a bacterium, because the language is one.
The dictionary is almost universal: in a human, an oak, a fungus and E. coli it is the same one, and only rare small departures are known.
The comparison simplifies in one direction: DNA is more complex than our programs. It also directs its own reading, and we have not fully taken it apart.
This is not a toy. Engineers do exactly this: they translate a file into the letters A, C, G, T, synthesize real DNA, and then read it back without a single error.
If we ourselves use DNA as a flash drive, it is already too late to argue whether this is a carrier of information.
“The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.”
“Human DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”
“There is a code. But evolution wrote it: chance and selection.”
DNA is both a book and a program. You have it, and so do a whale, an oak and a bacterium, written in one language and by one hand. It has an Author. The Bible calls Him by name: God.
“Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Psalm 139:16, written three thousand years before the discovery of DNA
The One who wrote the three billion letters of your body knows you. And He wants you to know Him.
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