The Genetic Chain of Command
Carl Zimmer @ Wired has an interesting article which covers the new discoveries revolving around the structure of genes and DNA and how all the wiring works.
We all already know that DNA helps structure life and carry out its functions. But this is not enough, the genes need to become active at the right place and the right time, otherwise if they were firing randomly we’d end up as one big pile of mush. Scientists have then discovered that there are a few genes which regulate the rest and these genes are responsible for switching on and off the many various other genes which make up an organism. Basically, the genes formed a chain of command, where a few were responsible for activating and deactivating the rest.
What makes it a bit more complicated is that as certain genes are switched on and off, the one which was switched on by one gene could switch off that same gene which activated it, in order to create a balance.
I guess the really interesting question here is , how do these genes know what to do? Where is the deep intelligence at the core which tells it how life should be structured? Where did this come from? Did it really just form from years of evolution a sort of “inherited intelligence”? I don’t buy the explanation that we’re all randomly created through natural selection.
As Zimmer himself says at the end of his article… “The source of their strength lies not in a single molecule — DNA — but in a complicated web of relationships. The network itself is the mystery for biologists in the 21st Century.”
Related Topics :
DNA Found to Have “Impossible” Telepathic Properties
Scientists are reporting evidence that contrary to our current beliefs about what is possible, intact double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA. The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible.
I’ve found God says man who cracked human genome.
“I don’t see that as necessary at all and I think it is deeply disappointing that the shrill voices that occupy the extremes of this spectrum have dominated the stage for the past 20 years.”
For Collins, unravelling the human genome did not create a conflict in his mind. Instead, it allowed him to “glimpse at the workings of God”.
“When you make a breakthrough it is a moment of scientific exhilaration because you have been on this search and seem to have found it,” he said. “But it is also a moment where I at least feel closeness to the creator in the sense of having now perceived something that no human knew before but God knew all along.
“When you have for the first time in front of you this 3.1 billion-letter instruction book that conveys all kinds of information and all kinds of mystery about humankind, you can’t survey that going through page after page without a sense of awe. I can’t help but look at those pages and have a vague sense that this is giving me a glimpse of God’s mind.”
Technorati Tags: DNA, Genes, Wired, Carl Zimmer, Collins, Genetics
