Think about the huge number of software programmers and engineers required to write and maintain the information code that runs our computers today. It’s incredible to think of the trillions of dollars and billions of hours at the foundation of the binary code the – “1″s and “0″s – that underlie today’s computer operations.
In our technology age, it’s easy to jump from the example of software code to the awesome code and complexity underlying the makeup and operation of all living things. DNA — the storehouse of genetics that creates the physical makeup of each organism – is really digital code. Similar to computer software binary code, DNA is a 4-digit code comprised of base chemical pairs laid out in a microscopic spiraling staircase.
For the human, these stairs are arranged in approximately 3 billion precise sequences, acting as the “letters” in our genetic alphabet. These letters combine into complex sequences that form the words, sentences and paragraphs that act as instructions to guide the formation and functioning of each host cell in our body – and there are about 30 trillion of those!
Through the discovery, mapping and sequencing of the DNA molecule, we now understand that organic life is based on vastly complex information code, and, like today’s most complex software codes, such information cannot be created or interpreted without some kind of “intelligence.” When Microsoft? needs to code more information, it adds thousands of smart people to its payroll, and they spend millions of hours writing and debugging code.
However, it is tragic that school textbooks falsely teach that the 4-digit code that makes up the human body – enough information to fill the Grand Canyon 50 times if printed in books – was created by random chance. Something to really think about… Like software to a computer, the DNA code is a genetic language that communicates information to the organic cell. Amazingly, the DNA molecule is a micro, digital, redundant, error-correcting, self-duplicating, information storage & retrieval system!
(Adapted from a Think Blast article by Randal Niles, Volume 5:22, 9/06)