The history of human civilization has passed through successive eras like Hunter-Gatherer Age, the Agricultural Age, and the Industrial Age. These labels reflect the dominant means by which societies produced goods, secured their livelihoods, and organized daily life. The world has now entered the Information Age, with many of the nations that led the Industrial Age continuing to shape its development.
During the industrial age, the main focus was to develop machines, but little attention was paid to the source of the knowledge that would make that possible. Instead, the mechanical systems that emphasized with no mention of that “source,” often in the service of positivism and materialism.
The Miller-Urey experiment, which was introduced in 1953, failed to produce useful results despite the broad publicity it received—yet it is still highly referenced in biology textbooks as an attempt to explain the origins of life. The discovery in the same year of the double-helical three-dimensional structure of the DNA molecule, however, opened the doors for those who were not willing to remain trapped in the materialistic worldview. For, what has been discovered was that this long and delicate molecule was functioning as a kind of information storage unit and a coding system written with four chemical “letters.”
The invention of computers and the coding of information through the repeated use of two characters—0 and 1—represented as electrical signals to convey symbols carrying meaning, may be considered the beginning of the Information Age. Every type of information (sound, image, color, etc.) could now be transmitted and stored. Information first stored on large floppy disks, later on CDs and smaller disks, eventually came to be stored on USB memory sticks and even smaller yet more powerful devices.
Interestingly, it was discovered that the DNA molecule too constitutes the common “biological molecular language of life” in all living beings, written through the arrangement of nitrogenous bases known as A (adenine), T (thymine), C (cytosine), and G (guanine). Scientists then began decoding this universal language shared by every living creature. The human genome contains 3 billion base pairs (6 billion DNA letters), and in every cell of our body there exist two complete copies of this information in the form of a spiral DNA chain about two meters long, tightly folded within the cell nucleus. DNA amounting to only the volume of five pinheads could store all the information of the entire human population on earth. Just one of those pinheads would contain two million times the information capacity of a two-terabyte hard drive.
The human body contains approximately 100 trillion cells. Every day, in each cell, nearly one million of these DNA letters are damaged due to excessive stretching or bending caused by oxygen or water. Every day, roughly 100 quintillion mutations of varying sizes occur throughout the body. Because of the fragile nature of DNA, alongside its potential to cause countless diseases each day, extremely powerful DNA repair enzymes have also been created. The destiny of these mutations and repair mechanisms are written by Divine knowledge so that they can function together in the operation of life according to human will and environmental conditions.
Without these DNA repair enzymes, life could not exist. Everyone would suffer from thousands of illnesses—especially cancer—and would live awaiting death at every moment. Yet the information necessary to produce these enzymes is itself recorded within DNA. So, which was created first: DNA or the DNA repair enzymes encoded within it? This is a chicken-and-egg problem and explanations based on blind chance fall short, because both can come into existence together only from a source with infinite knowledge and power. Logic and reason require that DNA and DNA repair enzymes must have existed simultaneously when God first created living beings.
According to biology professor James Shapiro of the University of Chicago:
“… all cells from bacteria to man possess a truly astonishing array of repair systems which serve to remove accidental and stochastic sources of mutation. Multiple levels of proofreading mechanisms recognize and remove errors that inevitably occur during DNA replication. … It has been a surprise to learn how thoroughly cells protect themselves against precisely the kinds of accidental genetic change that, according to conventional theory, are the sources of evolutionary variability. By virtue of their proofreading and repair systems, living cells are not passive victims of the random forces of chemistry and physics. They devote large resources to suppressing random genetic variation and have the capacity to set the level of background localized mutability by adjusting the activity of their repair systems.”
For example, in one repair process, if a hydrocarbon group entering the cell binds to one of the DNA letters and disrupts its structure, one of the DNA glycosylase enzymes identifies and captures the damaged letter, places it into a specially prepared pocket, cuts it out from the DNA molecule, and then other enzymes repair the resulting gap.
Old myths collapsed
It is now clearly understood that some earlier ideas taught in schools about DNA are incorrect. People were once told that humans shared 98–99% of their DNA with chimpanzees. Today, that number has dropped to around 85%. These are major differences between the two species. Humans possess many gene groups not found in chimpanzees, just as chimpanzees possess hundreds of gene groups absent in humans. Dr. Jon Ahlquist, the scientist who first proposed in the 1980s that our DNA was 98% similar, later abandoned this view and began defending ideas associated with creation.
At one time, it was claimed that approximately 97% of the human genome consisted of useless “junk DNA.” Those who favored chance-based explanations developed the concept of junk DNA because they struggled to explain how mutations could accumulate in the genome without destroying the cell’s existing information. For years, people were told that most of our genome consisted of useless leftovers from our evolutionary past. Yet even the evolutionary biologist J. S. Mattick has stated that failing to recognize the function of junk DNA will go down as one of the greatest mistakes in the history of molecular biology.
Overlapping shared codes
The genome contains multiple overlapping codes. Thus, a single DNA letter may simultaneously belong to the coded information of several different instructions. A letter may participate in constructing the three-dimensional architecture of DNA while at the same time contributing to the information code necessary for synthesizing DNA repair enzymes or assisting in the coding of another production process. Without such overlapping codes serving multiple functions simultaneously, the genome would need to be far larger. However, in accordance with the principle of maximum economy in the universe, no waste is allowed, and common codes are used within complex genomic encryption systems.
The wisdom of shared genes
If we know how to look, we may see the name of the Creator in every cell of our body, like a signature. DNA is the language of the book of life, written with chemical molecular letters, through which God creates living beings. We inherit our DNA from our parents. In nearly all living organisms there exist approximately 30–60 similar genes or gene groups. These basic genes, which are necessary for an organism to live, are responsible for carrying out indispensable functions such as digestion, respiration, circulation, and excretion. For example, whether living in water or on land, a vast group of creatures breathe using oxygen. Therefore, the genes coding for enzymes involved in oxygen-based respiration are written with similar letters in all animals.
Every human life begins when a sperm cell enters an egg cell and their nuclei merge. The resulting cell first divides into two, then four, eight, and sixteen, and the resulting cells differentiate into tissues. Tissues composed of similar specialized cells form organs and systems. As the embryo grows, the number of cells reaches trillions. Most of these cells continue dividing every few months to produce the same number of fresh human cells.
Yet one major challenge in cell division is transferring the encoded information exactly into the daughter cell. In a cell dividing roughly every 18–20 hours, the 2.24 billion base pairs forming the DNA chain must be copied perfectly approximately every three hours. The cell’s copying machinery transfers information to the new cell at the astonishing speed of 50 base pairs per second. Despite this speed, it would still take too long to replicate the entire human genome. Even if the copying process began simultaneously at the ends of each of the 46 chromosomes, replication of the longest chromosome (249 million base pairs) would still require about two months. To overcome this problem, tens of thousands of replication starting points have been placed throughout different regions of the chromosomes.
We may better understand this process through an analogy. Suppose you wanted to lay an electrical line from New Jersey to Texas (more than 2,000 km) so that when the switch was turned on in New Jersey, the light would illuminate in Texas. If you began laying the cable from only one end, perhaps it would take an entire year to complete. But if 100 separate teams started simultaneously at intervals of 200–300 kilometers, and in some places 70–80 kilometers apart, the entire network could be completed and connected within one or two weeks. How could a cell, composed of unconscious atoms, discover such a solution? How do cells know where to start replication at multiple points, and how do they regulate the timing? Structural biologist James Berger of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore notes that a highly sensitive control system is required, because without such control chaos would arise and some genes would be excessively duplicated.
Both accurate and fast
All these findings indicate that every living being is like a book written with four DNA letters. Similar words and even sentences may appear in every book. Yet each book is written for a distinct purpose and to convey a distinct meaning. Thousands of different books can be written using a common language. This does not prove that books randomly evolved from one another. As mentioned earlier, in this “Information Age,” the greatest information is the genomic knowledge written in this shared language, through which the characteristics and survival principles of every living being are determined, and its carrier is the DNA molecule. Beyond the fascination of basic biology, the use of the same four-letter common language for all living beings on earth is an extraordinarily clear sign of the Creator’s power and knowledge.
The entire process of DNA replication in human cells takes approximately eight hours. An error made at the beginning could cause the genome to become disordered, which is often a step toward cancer. Some genetic diseases also arise from problems related to DNA replication.
Much still remains to be understood in this area. First, replicated DNA winds around proteins called histones like thread around a spool and binds to many other proteins involved in turning genes on and off or making copies of them. How do these wrapped proteins influence one another, and how do they avoid obstructing one another? In addition, during reproduction, DNA must be halved through a different process (meiosis) within the male and female reproductive organs and then recreated as a new offspring through fertilization. If these extraordinary processes are fully understood, pathways may open toward preventing the faulty replications that lead to diseases such as cancer.
References
Shapiro, J.A. (1997): A Third Way, Boston Review, p. 2, February/March.
Catchpoole, D. (2016): Designer didn’t design junk, Creation Ministries Int. 3 Oct. https://creation.com/designer-didnt-design-junk
Attali, I., Botchan, M.R., Berger J.M. (2021): Structural Mechanism for Replicating DNA in Eukaryotes. Annual Review of Biochemistry, 90, 77-106.
