Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 64 (9164 total)
4 online now:
Newest Member: ChatGPT
Post Volume: Total: 916,902 Year: 4,159/9,624 Month: 1,030/974 Week: 357/286 Day: 13/65 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   coded information in DNA
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1053 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 41 of 334 (510074)
05-27-2009 7:36 AM
Reply to: Message 22 by WordBeLogos
05-26-2009 7:26 PM


quote:
This is in contrast to DNA, which codes for every inheritable trait. It codes, in advance, whether your eyes are green or blue. Whether your skin is white or red or black or yellow. Whether you are male or female. Whether your blood is RH Negative or O Positive. Whether you go bald or not, whether your chest is hairy, whether you are short or tall. The physical characteristics and biochemical instructions that DNA specifies in any particular instance would fill a very large book. DNA codes for these characteristics the same sense that magnetic fields on your hard drive code for all our family pictures. That's because DNA is not a force, a field, or a boundary, it's a code.
It doesn't really code for all of this quite so specifically. The genetic code just dictates the synthesis of a series of proteins; but the organism created from the proteins can vary quite a lot depending on the chemical environment it's all taking place in. Colonial insects can produce their different castes of workers and soldiers without each needing a different genome - they just manipulate the environment in which each develops.
We don't need an intelligence to arbitrarily assign meanings like 'GGGACCGAACTTCAG means blue eyes" - the code relies purely on the shape and chemical behaviour of the molecules involved. If your mRNA molecule has a codon consisting of three adenine bases, these will narually bond to three uracil bases on a tRNA molecule, because that's how the chemistry of these molecules forces them to behave. The tRNA molecule will be bonded to the amino acid lysine; again, just because the chemistry and shape of the molecule means this is what it does.
Sorry if this explanation is incomplete and confused, as I don't really understand it myself. The whole process involves a variety of other molecules like enzymes and the proteins and RNA that make up ribosomes, but it all works by undirected chemistry. Molecules fit together because of their shape and because of ionic bonds; and as different molecules fit together they change shape - all of this behaviour eventually leaves us with a protein. No design is necessary.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 22 by WordBeLogos, posted 05-26-2009 7:26 PM WordBeLogos has not replied

Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024