Ever wonder just how complex DNA is?
It’s kind of like an instruction book–scratch that–an instruction ENCYCLOPEDIA! It’s got bases that act like letters, and those “letters” form “words” (technically: nucleobases form codons), and even more complex ideas.
So complex, in fact, that until recently, when scientists mistakenly hypothesized that most of our DNA was “junk” and not used for anything, they STILL were calling it “complex”. They ended up being totally wrong on the idea of most of it being junk, though! We now know that over 90% of DNA gets used (technically: gets transcribed into RNA). So, it’s not “junk”. That much we can be sure of.
DNA has 4 specific bases.
We’ll call them A, C, T, and G (technically: adenine, cytosine, thymine, and guanine). These, in turn, form “words” (technically: codons), and these “words” are combined in seemingly endless ways to form even longer ideas. Your cells hold encyclopedias worth of information, written in the language of DNA.
If that weren’t enough…if those bases were any different, DNA as an information system wouldn’t work well enough to continuously support life, as the bases as anything else would risk mutating into more harmful forms that could render life completely impossible.
As our children’s book, Where Did the Universe Come From? points out: “Can an instruction book write itself? Or did someone have to write it?”
Because that’s essentially what DNA is…a book. An instruction book. An instruction encyclopedia, on everything that a creature needs to grow and survive. A manual on how to build the organism that possesses it, from scratch.
It looks designed, and so…
DNA not only has information about your traits but also tells proteins how to fold without getting damaged and messed up (which is a complex process all on its own), and many other things.
It looks designed…and more and more scientists are finding themselves stuck in the position of having to jump on board with the idea that yeah, maybe it IS designed….because that just makes sense.
