Hello everyone, and welcome to explore the unsolved mysteries with us.
Whose masterpiece is the rich, complex, and flawless DNA sequence in the end? Scientists claim to see the existence of God in the genome! (Photo: Freepik)
In the previous program that took everyone to explore the vast universe, today we will go together to explore the “microscopic world”, because some scientists say they have discovered the existence of God is there…
Explore the mystery of the human genome
The gentleman with gray hair and smiling face in the photo below is named Francis S. Collins, he is the Director of the National Institute of Hygiene in the United States, and the Director of the National Human Genome Foundation Research Department of the United States of America. , and is also the owner of the “Human Genome Project”.
Francis S. Collins, he is the Director of the National Institute of Hygiene in the United States, and the Director of the Department of Research on the National Human Genome Organization of the United States.
Everyone has more or less heard of the word “gene”, so what is the “Human Genome Project”? Here’s a little introduction. In human cells, there are 23 pairs of chromosomes carrying genetic information, including 22 pairs of autosomes and 1 pair of sex chromosomes. Of those 23 pairs of chromosomes, half come from the father and the other half from the mother. A total of 6 billion DNA codes are contained in these chromosomes. The “Human Genome Project” is about determining what the sequence of this DNA code is, drawing family portraits for them, and finding the pieces of code that have a genetic function on DNA – genes. The ultimate goal is to decode human genetic information.
This plan was initially promoted by the US Department of Energy and the US National Institute of Sanitation, but later discovered the more complicated it was, and it was impossible for the US to continue to expand international cooperation to find out more. help. In this way, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, etc. successively participated, and eventually the “Human Genome Project” became a huge multinational and interdisciplinary scientific discovery project. . So far, humans have decoded 92% of the genome, while the remaining 8% of the genome has been temporarily shelved due to the current level of technology being insufficient.
Leading such a large project, everyone knows how good Dr. Collins is in this field. According to ordinary people, a leading scientist researching life sciences like Dr. Collins, with just a slight touch of the genome, can change the code of life, even can create new strains. He must have been an absolute atheist scholar who did not believe that life was created by God.
However, the truth is quite the opposite. Dr. Collins himself introduced himself as an atheist scholar, but after entering medical school to study DNA, the more research he studied about life, the more skeptical he became of atheism. God. By the age of 27, Collins had finally become a devout Christian. Some colleagues of Dr. Collins, after learning that he began to believe in God, said that he had killed his own reason, even predicting that Dr. Collins would soon be brain-blasted by the contradiction between scientific research. study and religion.
However, after so many years, Dr. Collins’s brain not only did not explode, but also became full of wisdom, helping him achieve many successes in the field of molecular biology, which has always had dramatic competition. become a key figure in this field. And along with in-depth research into human DNA, many researchers, like Dr. Collins, increasingly discover and feel the existence of God more and more clearly. Why so?
Aggregate DNA code implies a sea of information
Before we get into the world of DNA, let me ask you two questions. The first question is, if you went out this morning and found the words “good morning” on the fallen leaves on the ground, would you think it was someone who was deliberately surprising you? you, or is it just an unconscious masterpiece of the autumn wind? The second question is, if someone said that a monkey sat in front of a computer and kept pressing the 0 and 1 keys at random, and the result was MacOS, would you believe it?
Okay, now write down your answers, and let’s go to the microcosm to see what DNA looks like.
The double helix structure of DNA was discovered in 1953 by American biologist James Watson and British biologist Francis Crick. Contemporary scientists have lamented: This opens a portal to mankind. large to search for genetic secrets.
The structure of the DNA double helix. The atoms with different colors represent the elements and the detailed structure of the two base pairs is shown on the right. (Image: Wiki)
The transmission of DNA genetic information is responsible for 4 nucleic acids (Nucleobases) in DNA, namely A-adenine, T-thymine, G-guanine, C-cytosine. We will only use the initials to refer to them later.
These four keys are put together in pairs, for example AT is a pair and CG is a pair, the permutation and combination of these discordant pairs determine the physical genetic characteristics of the organism, for example such as tall, short, fat, thin, to immaterial genetic characteristics such as personality, intelligence, etc.
On each chromosome (Chromosome) of an organism there is a histone of the DNA molecule. This DNA molecule has a double-helical structure; Don’t think it’s small even though it’s curled up in a cell nucleus about 6 microns in size, if stretched out, DNA can be up to 2m long, taller than the average adult man in the world. If we use the four letters ATCG to represent the double-helix structure of DNA, it looks like a perforated paper tape, with the punched area on the tape representing 1 and the unpunched region representing 0, which is used in the early days of computer programming?
The computing world uses “binary code”. No matter what programming language a programmer uses, be it C++ or Java, it will eventually be converted to a computer language consisting of “0, 1”. In the digital age, various technologies have been deployed by humans, such as 3D printing, artificial intelligence, and virtual/augmented reality technology, including the video people are watching. , which are ultimately executed by a series of binary computer instructions consisting of 0s and 1s.
So, according to Dr. Collins, if we put the idea of computer programming into the DNA world, we could say that DNA uses a “quartile code” – the four codes of the ATCG. And the amount of information contained in this “quartile code” compared to the “binary code” is boundless.
As an example, with the same 20 codes, if “binary” is used, the number of possible pairs of possible combinations of 2 to the power of 20 is more than a million (1,048,576) pairs. If using the “quartile code”, the number of possible combinations is 4 to the power of 20, which is more than a million million (1,099,511,627,776) pairs, and the difference between the two is 1 million times. The larger the number of codes, the larger the difference.
So how much information does human DNA contain? Let’s do a calculation. I told you that there are 23 pairs of chromosomes in human cells, for a total of 6 billion DNA codes. An important conclusion drawn by the “Human Genome Project” is that the normal chromosomes of men and women are the same, not different. Therefore, we can say that the genetic information of human DNA is composed of at least 3 billion quartile codes. In other words, the amount of information that can be contained in a tiny human cell is 4 to the power of 3 billion. Only such a small space can store such a large amount of information, truly unthinkable for a mechanical computer storage system.
Each of these 3 billion DNA codes, or combinations of several, can manipulate the human body to perform various complex functions. I don’t know if people realize this: Human life begins with a fertilized egg and continues to replicate, divide, replicate and divide, after that, all the cells in All human bodies have the same DNA on the chromosomes in their nucleus. However, after these cells enter the stage of differentiation, the cellular matter can undergo 72 transformations, forming various cells and tissues of the human body, such as red blood cells, white blood cells, nerve cells, etc. and humans also develop different organs.
In addition, biologists have also discovered that during the development of a human embryo, different tissue structures and organs are developed at different stages, all of which are determined by time points. available. If it happens just a little bit sooner or later, the baby will be born with a birth defect later in life. And all of this is precisely controlled by the DNA code.
Editing the human genome? Pandora’s box destroys humanity!
Although humanity has discovered how some human genes work, compared to the information contained in the 3 billion DNA codes, that is only a small drop in the ocean.
People may remember the controversy caused by He Jiankui, an associate professor of biology at China Southern University of Science and Technology, and his research team, when they edited the genes of newborn embryos to help children immune to AIDS? At that time, the whole human society was shocked and condemned. In addition to ethical issues, technical issues and future pitfalls are also the reason why scientists strongly criticize this. Based on current understanding of human DNA coding, human genes can be edited at will. Who knows if this genetic scissors could cut off the possibility of AIDS, or cut off humanity’s future? In genetic experiments, situations where “off-target effects” arise from time to time.
The so-called “off-target effect” is that in the process of random gene editing causing damage to other genes, causing gene mutations, gene defects, chromosomal abnormalities, etc., and other consequences. If gene-edited children have a genetic defect, they will pass that defect on to the next generation, and then from generation to generation, even potentially dangerous. unfathomable for all mankind. Therefore, some people describe that the act of editing and editing human genes is opening “Pandora’s box” to destroy humanity.
Here let’s use a software programmer as a comparison, if there is a super program with extraordinary source code and super powerful performance, one can only know what the result will be after. when operating that program, but there is no way to see through, interpret the entire source code. At most, people can only explain a small part, no one dares to arbitrarily modify the code, because just a little mistranslation, a point will lead to the whole system crashing. I think no one dares to think that their programming ability can be more powerful than the person who wrote this super program.
Similarly, 3 billion DNA “programs” have been written in four ATCG codes to create a human with a perfect body, high intelligence, and a stable state of life. Could this be just the result of a series of coincidences and random effects?
Great stability of DNA
DNA also has a very powerful restoration (replication) function. When a cell divides into two, the DNA is quickly restored so that the two cells have identical DNA. This process happens so quickly that it is not enough to use flint sparks to visualize it, and our bodies are restoring countless copies every moment.
However, assuming a programmer could type every second of the DNA code, typing eight hours a day, 365 days without a break, it would take more than 57 years to complete the replication of the DNA code in a cell. Of course, some people will say that I use a computer to store all the human DNA codes and use a supercomputer to copy it, that’s a matter of minutes. That may be true, but I need to remind you that this supercomputer is still much slower than the DNA self-replicating process in cells, which supercomputers were invented by mankind, a kind of supercomputer. intellectual life is limited.
There is another point that cannot be ignored, DNA has a powerful self-repair system to repair itself. Scientific research has found that, when errors arise due to injury or replication errors, DNA can carry out self-repair repair, including dislocation repair, excision repair, repair recombination etc., there are at least 140 types of such repair methods. Even if there is no way to repair it, the DNA repair system will initiate a suicide mechanism: no more saving, so as not to spread the wrong genetic information, and the cell will sacrifice itself if carried DNA has erroneous genetic information. Honestly, even the most powerful programmers today can’t write such “smart” programs.
The superhuman and eclectic DNA replication and self-repair system has truly guaranteed the stability of the organism’s genetic information, thus wanting a revolutionary gene mutation as described. described in the theory of evolution and still achieve stable heritability, this probability is actually extremely small. The “Human Genome Project” has found that after tens of thousands of generations from the time of human birth until now, people in the world, regardless of region and ethnicity, have only about one in a thousand differences in their characteristics. DNA code. And this one-thousandth difference produces only the different characteristics and personalities of “you, me, and him” but not new species.
Can a monkey really turn into a human?
Since evolution always tells people that humanity evolved from monkeys, when we made this program, out of curiosity, we checked the chromosomal information of other primates, and as a result, no I don’t know when I see it, I’m shocked to see it, because there are so many differences in the number of chromosomes. For example:
Humans 46 chromosomes
Formosan Rock Monkey 42 chromosomes
Squirrel monkey 44 chromosomes
Rhesus monkey 42 chromosomes
Capuchin monkey 54 chromosomes
Chimpanzee 48 chromosomes
Number of chromosomes. (Photo taken from Epoch Times source video)
Let’s first assume that humans really evolved from apes with 21 pairs of chromosomes, if this chromosome is to turn into 23 pairs then there must be a huge genetic variation.
Assuming that the number of chromosomes in a female monkey’s cell has changed from 21 pairs of 42 to 23 pairs of 46 existing chromosomes in humans, to inherit such chromosome number, a male monkey must be present. have the same 23 pairs of chromosomes as their mother, and these two monkeys must pair up so that their offspring can maintain 23 pairs of chromosomes. Otherwise, it could only be 21 pairs of chromosomes plus a few unpaired chromosomes.
In fact, from the point of view of genetics, during the inheritance of cell chromosomes to the next generation, any increase or decrease of “one”, even “half” of a chromosome will leave Very serious consequences! A good example is “Down Syndrome”. Patients with this condition have an extra chromosome number 21, and have a total of 47 chromosomes in their body. Medical research has found that patients with “Down syndrome” are also more susceptible to congenital diseases than the general population.
Therefore, according to the doctrine of natural selection, monkeys with increased or decreased chromosomes are very susceptible to spontaneous elimination. From that point on, it was impossible to turn a monkey into a human. Massive changes in chromosomes that could lead them down a path called “evolution,” would even cause entire populations to disappear because of various bizarre diseases.
With that said, do you remember the two questions I asked at the beginning of the show? I believe no one would think that the words “good morning” on a tree’s leaves were merely the result of the autumn wind, and no one would believe that a monkey could write a MacOS system with random input. On the one hand, whether they are written or systematic, they contain intellectual information that cannot be manipulated arbitrarily and lawlessly; on the other hand, from a purely mathematical point of view, the probability of something happening is almost zero.
Now back to looking at the complex and powerful DNA code of humans and countless other creatures, you’ll understand why the world’s top scientists like Dr. Collins, the more you delve into, the more they discovered the presence of God everywhere.
