DNA contains the instructions that create all living things – but the Spirit is created by the interaction between all Life.

Often referred to as the ‘essence of Life’, the powers within these invisible building blocks are responsible for all the wonders of the animal and plant kingdom.

Deoxyribonucleic Acid is popularly also understood and referred to as the DNA Helix and credited as a discovery made by James Dewey Watson and Francis Harry Compton Crick in 1953 (whom were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine,1962 along with Maurice Hugh Frederic Wilkins). However, Rosalind Franklin is often credited as the fourth person whom was crucial in the discovery; since she was creating the best X-ray diffraction pictures of DNA at the time. Many say that she would have also been awarded the Nobel prize, alongside or instead of Wilkins, if she had not died of cancer in 1958 at the age of 37.

It is important to note here that Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884) is accredited with being the ‘father’ of the science of genetics, broadly defined as the study of heredity and variation in living things.

Every living thing has its own unique genetic code. It is the thread between the past and today.

DNA (double helix) information is stored in a code made from four chemical bases: Adenine and Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine that always appear as CG and AT, called base pairs. When stretched out, the double helix looks like a ladder, with each base pair forming the steps, and sugar and phosphate molecules forming the vertical sidepieces of the ladder.

The arrangement of these bases is similar to letters of the alphabet form words and sentences in language; bases ‘write’ the instructions for building and maintaining an organism. A complete word in a DNA ‘sentence’ is known as a gene. This genetic information forms the code that programs a cell’s function and carries information that is passed onto future generations. This is known as heredity.

An organism’s genes determine:
- whether an organism will be classified as a plant or animal and which family and species it will belong
- how it uses food and fights infections and at times how it behaves
- it is estimated that there are 28-120 thousand genes (due to dispute over what constitutes a gene)

DNA is found in the nucleus of a cell. A cell is the very smallest unit of living matter. Cells are made from atoms – the smallest units of matter. There are many different kinds of cells; they are different shapes and sizes and have different jobs. People, plants and animals are made of cells.

10,000,000,000,000 to 100,000,000,000,000?
Estimates state that humans have anywhere from 10-100 trillion cells.

There are many similarities between cells; one of the most important is that all cells (except for bacterial cells) have a nucleus, which is like the brain of the cell. It is a dark structure in the middle of the cell that controls all the cell’s activities. DNA contains genetic information and is located in the nucleus in compact coils called chromosomes.

Every living thing has a different number of chromosomes in each of their cells (but is made from the same four bases, sugar and phosphate molecules) – the only difference is the order or sequence in the DNA molecule – it is this sequence that is the genetic code. The total genetic make-up of an organism is called a genotype; whereas the expression or appearance of an organism is referred to as its phenotype.

Humans are genotypically 99.9% the same – only 0.01% difference in our genotype accounts for all the different phenotypes of people.

Human cells have 46 chromosomes. Half come from your father and the other half from your mother. Out of 46 chromosomes, 2 are sex chromosomes – X and X for a female or an X and Y for a male.

Thus, the information that DNA carries is passed from one generation to the next. Although, there is constant debate over how much of what we are like is due to heredity and defined by DNA (nature) or that who we are is a result of the influence and interaction of and with the environment (nurture).

The evolution of the World as we know it today is written within DNA.

… for further exploration into the LAByrinth… Human Genome Project (HGP), functional genomics, bio-art, virus, bacteria, parasite, gene therapy, biotechnology, molecular diagnostics, genetic modified foods (GMOs), genetic engineering, DNA fingerprinting, patented seeds, pharmaceutical, DNA chip technology, genetic similarity, eugenics, abortion, Hippocratic oath, Darwinism, social Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, evolution, natural selection, animal testing, extinction, stem cell research, cloning, Dolly, transgenic, DNA forensics, transhuman, posthuman, bio ethics…