The scientists explore the miracles of DNA but refuse to consider the existence of a divine Designer. Read this article to the end and discover your truth.
The human body is made up of billions of “cells” each with a nucleus. This nucleus contains all our genetic information. This is contained in our chromosomes that contain our own DNA. Chromosomes consist of DNA that carries the genes (about 25,000).
Blood is made up of red blood cells lacking DNA, but also many other cells including white blood cells and platelets. These cells have all the DNA they need in their nucleus. That’s why DNA fingerprints can be extracted from a blood trace.
April 25, 1953, is one of them. Precisely 60 years ago, James Watson and Francis Crick published their discovery: DNA forms a double helix structure wrapped around an axis. Genetics was going to be upset.
Speaking of Genetic Code Discovery, it was in 1961, Francis’s torticollis and colleagues introduced the idea of the codon. However, it was Marshall Nirenberg and colleagues who deciphered the genetic code.
Deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA is a biological macromolecule present in all cells as well as in many viruses. DNA contains all the genetic information, called the genome, allowing the development, functioning, and reproduction of living beings. It is a nucleic acid, as well as ribonucleic acid (RNA). Nucleic acids are, along with peptides and carbohydrates, one of three major families of biopolymers essential to all known life forms.
Genetic information contains DNA, genes, chromosomes, and the genome.
Each of our cells contains all the genetic information necessary for the functioning and development of our body, in the form of chromosomes, themselves made of DNA. Genes are segments of these chromosomes. Each gene encodes a determined hereditary character.
*** Definition of DNA
DNA (for deoxyribonucleic acid) is the support of heredity. It is a long filament formed of the succession of four different nucleotides (chemical units of DNA: adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine), which is wound into a double helix. The double helix of DNA is folded back on itself in the form of chromosomes and is located in the nucleus of each cell.
Outside the nucleus, there is also a small strand of DNA in the mitochondria. These organelles produce the energy necessary for cell function and contain their own DNA molecule (mitochondrial DNA). This small circular DNA carries some genetic information useful for mitochondria only.
*** Definition of a Chromosome
In the nucleus of each human cell, DNA is organized into 23 pairs of chromosomes, one copy inherited from the mother and the other inherited from the father. The 22 pairs of identical chromosomes are called “autosomes” and the 23rd pair, which determines the sex of the person, consists of the sex chromosomes X and/or Y, or “gonosomes”: XX for a woman and XY for a man.
Each chromosome is formed by a continuous DNA molecule that is tightly wrapped around itself and maintained by specific proteins, giving it the characteristic shape of X.
In 1992, Genethon publishes the first map of a chromosome, chromosome 21.
*** Definition of a Gene – Definition of the Genome
In our cells, our genome, also called genetic heritage, is made up of our entire DNA. A gene is a small piece of DNA that corresponds to specific genetic information. This is given by a succession in a precise order of the 4 nucleotides.
Genes code for the production of particular proteins that play definite roles in the body. All the genetic information of a human being (between 20,000 and 30,000 genes) is unique. With the exception of identical twins, no one has the same genome.
Since the genes are always located in the same places with respect to each other on the chromosomes, it was possible to map them by sequencing. The first (partial) mapping of the human genome was done by Genethon in 1992, thanks to donations from Telethon.
The Miracles of DNA
What would happen if we could travel on a microscopic scale and enter the fantastic environment of a tiny human cell – among the billions of others that make it up? What a grandiose and wonderful world we would discover! In this infi¬nitesimal and perfectly ordered environment, we would see complex molecular machinery actively rotating the functions that make life possible on earth! Imagine the journey to the heart of a cell – to its core – we would find the “brains” of this small, invisible, and unfathomable world: an incredibly fine and long chain of atoms that form a molecule whose existence is a miracle.
This miracle molecule is deoxyribonucleic acid – more commonly known as DNA – and it represents a technological feat of divine engineering and design, which is a marvel to behold! God decreed that all living creatures reproduce “after their kind” (Genesis 1: 21-27). This is why children look like their parents and it is through the miracle of DNA that God gives life as He commanded. DNA is literally the encoded model of all life on earth.
1 – The Discovery of DNA
Between the 1950s and 1960s, biologist James Watson and physicist Francis Crick shared a Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA, and their discovery was simply astounding! Far from being a group of atoms pell-mell, DNA has an elegant structure and is very well designed.
The DNA molecule looks like a long “rope ladder” wrapped around an imaginary axis – called a double-helix structure. These two “amounts”, consisting of sugars and phosphates, are interconnected by “bars” or base pairs. It is the sequence (succession) of these base pairs that gives DNA its remarkable ability to store and transmit the countless information it contains: the physical footprint that has made you what you are!
Only four biological compounds – adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T) – paired together form the “bars” of the DNA molecules. The latter, present in almost every cell in our body, contains these base pairs in a special and unique order that encodes all the necessary instructions that allow our cells to produce the complex network of molecules that make up our body.
2 – The Code of Life
The information encoded in the long strands of DNA molecules allows our body to produce all the proteins needed to perform various functions just like a computer reads instructions stored on a hard drive. One could compare the molecular code of the DNA, formed of a sequence of bases A, C, G, T, with the binary code used in computer science, exclusively composed of a succession of the digits 0 and 1.
For example, the sequence 011100 00011000010111000001100001 corresponds to the French word “papa” (father, daddy in English Word) for computers that use the ASCII binary code. In the same way, the CAGAAGCCA sequence in a DNA strand asks the body to produce the glutamine-lysine-proline amino acid chain. In the same way that the combinations of 0 and 1 contain and transmit the information necessary for the functioning of a computer, these chains composed of four simple chemical bases – A, C, G, T – contain and transmit the genetic fingerprint of each living organism on earth!
*** The Miracle of DNA Is in Information Storage System Par Excellence
In addition, DNA is the information storage system par excellence, worthy of advanced technologies. Science is only beginning to understand the immense capabilities of this marvelous God-designed molecule – which surpasses anything humanity has invented! Several recent and fascinating experiences have demonstrated the important role of this grandiose invention of the Almighty God!
In the September 2012 issue of the journal Science, molecular geneticist George Church and his colleagues reported that they managed to encode the book written by Church, Regenesis, into a strand of DNA, and then decode it successfully to find the original text, as one could do with a computer hard drive. In the abstract of their article, they write: “DNA is one of the most stable and dense means of information that we know. ”
A similar experience goes even further. In January 2013, the prestigious journal Nature reported that a team of scientists had encoded on a small piece of DNA the 154 sonnets of Shakespeare, the original of the scientific article by Francis Crick and James Watson on the structure of the DNA, a color photograph of the European Institute of Bioinformatics in England and an audio excerpt from Martin Luther King’s famous speech “I had a dream”. They then sent this DNA – in a vial without special packaging – from the United States to Germany, where their colleagues decoded the information successfully in their original format (text, photo, audio).
*** DNA Data Storage
Scientists believe that their technique “could later be extended to create a much larger storage capacity than any digital information stored today in the world” (“DNA Data Storage: 100 Million Hours of HD Video in every day” Cup “, Phys.org). This volume of information currently stored would be about a zettabyte – a million gigabytes! They say that the equivalent of a cup of DNA would be enough to store 100 million hours of HD video. It would take more than 10,000 years to watch these videos continuously – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. All this in a simple cup of coffee.
3 – Dare to Deny the Existence of a Designer?
The existence of this remarkable molecule is a real obstacle to overcome for all those who refuse to believe that an Almighty God created life for a wonderful purpose! The researchers explore the origin of life but refuse to consider the existence of a divine Designer. Thus, they find themselves before the famous paradox of “the egg and the hen” because the proteins necessary to read the DNA code are themselves created by using the DNA code! The detailed information contained in the DNA cannot be read without the complex proteins specially designed to decode them. But these complex and specialized proteins cannot be created without the detailed instructions contained in the DNA!
Many biochemists persist in recreating a mythical and mysterious story of “creation without God” in the laboratory, seeking to discover a plausible scenario in which information-carrying molecules would randomly assemble and begin to reproduce. Despite all their efforts, it’s a total failure. Just as a complex computer program cannot exist without having been created by a programmer, the presence of this remarkable DNA molecule on which any living creature rests on earth is undeniable proof that life requires a designer and that this invention comes necessarily from a Supreme Designer who surpasses all intelligence!
With all the cells that read programs encoded in our DNA – equivalent to hundreds of billions of computers that read so many hard drives every second of our life – our body is the proof that we must believe in a Creator! As science discovers more and more the wonders of the human body and life on earth, we can join our voice to that of King David by addressing God: “I praise you for being a creature of wonderful “(Psalm 139: 14)!