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Code for life
imgorthand/ istock
As children, long before mobiles, we were proud to know a small fragment of Morse Code. If we ever got into trouble, we knew we only had to bang out the dots and dashes of the International Distress Call with whatever came to hand, or flash our torches on and off in the right sequence, and somebody would recognise it and come rushing to the rescue.
The Morse Code was invented by Samuel Morse and others, and more or less finalised by 1865. Two world wars and the development of radio focussed huge attention on secure encoded communications – the story of the German Enigma Code and the race to break it is well known. Then came the huge explosion of computer power based on the binary code that can be traced back to Gottfried Leibniz in 1689. Today codes are everywhere: virtually everything that we buy is identified by a barcode (invented by Woodland and Silver in 1952), and you may well have come to this site by scanning a QR Code with your mobile phone (code invented by Masahiro Hara of Denso Wave in 1994).
Without codes and the people who invented them, our lives would be very different.
In fact, without code we would not be here at all.
The Code of Life
In the 1950s scientists discovered the key to life – a molecule that contained a chemical code that made life possible, a code common to every form of life on earth, animals or plants, and throughout the universe as far as we know. No less an authority than Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, noted this code as directly comparable with digital computer code, but superior to it in every way:
"DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created". Bill Gates 'The Road Ahead' 1995
The DNA code does not use light or sound or radio waves but is based on chemistry. The basic principles on which it works are now well known – for a simple summary see GALLERY 14 "The perfect copy".
Photo 51 below, a now famous X-ray based image of a molecule of DNA produced by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling in 1952. It was a major clue to the double helix structure of DNA proposed by Watson and Crick in 1953.
Martin Barraud/ istock
How do we make sense
of this chemical code?
The information contained in the DNA code are instructions, needed by another part of the living cell, the ribosome.
DNA never leaves the nucleus of the cell, so first of all the code has to be copied and transferred to the ribosome by 'messenger RNA', mRNA. Think of the ribosome as the 'factory' of the cell; it takes in raw materials and converts them to the many proteins that are needed for life. The raw materials it uses are amino acids, which come largely from our diet. There are over 500 amino acids, but only 22 are used in the life processes.
So the purpose of the DNA Code is this: to tell the ribosome how to string together the different amino acids in the long chains needed to make proteins, proteins that are the stuff of life, that describe who we are. There are about 20,000 proteins encoded in the human genome.
K.K.T Madhusanka / shutterstock
This diagram may help to give you some idea of how the ribosome (in red in two parts, large and small subunits) uses the coded information in mRNA.
Another form of RNA, Transfer RNA, tRNA, matches individual amino acids to the mRNA code in order to join them together in long chains, in the right order to form proteins, the proteins on which life depends. A typical protein may have about 400 amino acids in length, but they can be much shorter or longer. The amino acids have to be in exactly the right order for a particular protein to work – the chances against a new protein forming by accident are beyond credibility. The whole of this 'machine' has to be functional if the DNA Code is to be translated and implemented – if life is to flourish.
So how did this DNA Code come about?
Our brief survey of codes confirms one very obvious thing: codes don't happen by accident and they don't get translated by accident. If they are not translated they are worthless. If they are translated but not put into effect, they are also worthless.
Our own codes are all designed by human intelligence to meet particular human needs. So what about DNA?
What do scientists think about it?
In today's culture scientists are under huge pressure to conform to the atheist, materialist spirit of our age. But there are an increasing number who are prepared to go wherever the evidence leads, regardless of how unfashionable their conclusions may be:
"The simplicity which one believed to be the foundation of life has been revealed to be a fantasy which has been replaced by systems of frightening complexity. The awareness that life was conceived by an intelligent being is a shock for we men of the twentieth century who were made to think that life was the result of simple natural laws". Michael Behe Professor of Chemistry
"The idea that man is the result of innumerable errors in the copying of DNA
during molecular duplication... seems upon reflection absurd... but also
contrary to reality, which condemns the idea". Pierre-Paul Grassé Professor of Biology
"Belief in God can be an entirely rational choice, and the principles of faith are in fact, complementary with the principles of science".
Francis Collins one time Director of the ANIH
"When one examines the vast number of possible structures
that could result from a simple random combination of amino acids in an evaporating primeval pond, it is mind-boggling to believe that life could have originated in this way. It is more plausible that a Great Builder with a master plan would be required for such a task". Perry Reeves Professor of Chemistry
For many similar quotes with full documentation, see Reference below
'As children we were proud to know a small fragment of Morse Code... '
but we knew nothing of DNA.
Within one lifetime the astonishing discoveries of modern science have made the case for God. This God has revealed Himself to us not as a remote impersonal Intelligence, but a Father and Friend, who created us to be His children, and who will answer our calls in distress.
Reference:
'God, the Science,the Evidence' Bollore and Bonassies Palomar Editions 2025
It never happened of course, but the knowledge was important.