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Eternal Information – Part 6 – Living Information
Episode 198 – Eternal Information – Part 6 – Living Information
Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.
Script:
For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.
Hebrews, chapter 3, verse 4, New International Version
********
VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. Thank you for joining us here today on Anchored by Truth. For several episodes we have been doing a series we call “Eternal Information.” We do series like Eternal Information to help people focus on a foundational truth about the universe we see around us. The universe exhibits order and design. Albert Einstein recognized this simple fact and famously said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible.” Other scientists have noted that the universe displays all the elements that we see in the best manufacturing systems that we have today. The same pieces and parts are used to build structures as diverse as snowflakes, galaxies, stars, and puppy dogs. To help us explore even more about the marvel that is the universe and especially life, today in the studio we have RD. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. RD, the universe is amazing isn’t it?
RD: Yes, it is. The universe is so consistent in how it works that we can analyze the composition of stars that are billions and billions of miles away from our little earth. There is no way we could do that unless we knew that the same constituent parts that make up our sun, our earth, and even our bodies were also present in all the other parts of the universe. And that’s the reason that we wanted to undertake this series on eternal information. Just think about it for a second and you quickly realize that the presence of design requires a designer. The presence of organization requires an organizer. Yet this is the very thing that atheists and radical secularists exclude a priori. Why would they do this? There’s only one reason. It’s not that they don’t realize that God exists. They do. All people do. It’s that they don’t like the implications of acknowledging that existence. Because it would mean they would have to make changes to their lives and worldview.
VK: So, today we want to go more deeply into the order and design that are present in living creatures. We began this discussion last time on Anchored by Truth when we did a high level overview of some of the basic elements of biochemistry. And in that discussion we noted that the basic unit which is present in all living things is a cell. Some cells have a nucleus and some don’t. But all living things are comprised of cells. And cells, despite their tiny size, are exceedingly sophisticated structures. Anyone who has ever contemplated the properties of a living cell for even a moment has to recognize that human beings still do not have the ability to create structures or systems with that level of design finesse. Our most elegant examples of technology and advanced design pale in comparison to the complexity present to every cell on the planet. Yet, the most amazing thing is that some people continue to insist that all of that sophisticated complexity could have arisen by chance. I heard someone say once that its far more likely you could put butter, eggs, sugar, and milk in a bowl, leave it in the sun, and wait for it to turn into a cake than expect the first cell to have come together by chance.
RD: Right. The right ingredients are necessary to make a cake but not sufficient. Making cakes takes information – a recipe. And it takes a chef who will apply the recipe – correctly! And today we’re going to continue to pointing to other evidence that shows the absurdity of believing that random and chaotic activity could generate an integrated structure that has more than 100 billion subordinate parts.
VK: A lot more ingredients than it takes to make a cake …
RD: True dat – and all those ingredients must be present in just the right places and just the right amounts for life to be possible. Today we want to do an in-depth look at the most amazing information storage medium on the planet – DNA. We’re doing this because we want people to have facts that run directly counter to the assertion that random chance could have produced living creatures.
VK: Well, just as a brief review to set the stage – we have already learned several critical things about the biomolecular structure of living things. As you said, the basic structure of all life on earth, whether plant or animal, is a cell. Some creatures like bacteria are only a single cell. Human beings contain over 35 trillion cells. Regardless of the number all life on earth is cellular based. Cells are composed of permeable membranes that encase the components of the cell that actually carry on the business of life. Those components include protein “machines” and nucleic [NU-CLAY-ICK] acids. The most famous nucleic acid is, of course, DNA. Proteins are built from organic compounds called amino acids. Amino acids are small compounds consisting of 10 to 20 atoms. There are hundreds of known amino acids but only 20 of those are used by living creatures.
RD: And DNA is built from compounds called nucleotides [NU-KLEE-O-TIDES]. Nucleotides consist of a sugar, a nitrogen containing base, and a phosphate group. The nucleotides of DNA are linked together through their phosphate group and they differ only in the structure of their nitrogen containing base. Specifically, there are 4 bases that comprise the structure of DNA: adenine [a-duh-neen], guanine [gwaa-neen}, cytosine [sai-tuh-seen], and thymine [thigh-mean]. They are usually abbreviated A, G, C, and T. So, these are the “letters” of the genetic alphabet. For chemical reasons the adenine in DNA tends to form an association with thymine and guanine forms an association with cytosine. And DNA is made up of two long strands – the famous double helix – joined by means of the associations: A with T and C with G. This means that the two strands are complimentary. From a DNA standpoint the simplest form of life that lives independently is a bacterium known as mycoplasma genitalium. It has about 500,000 base pairs in its DNA strand. Human beings by contrast have 3 Billion base pairs in our DNA.
VK: So, DNA even at its simplest is not a simple structure. I think a lot of people are misled by the fact that we are talking about things that are so small they can only be seen by sophisticated microscopes. I think some people associate small size with simplicity. But with respect to DNA that’s not true at all, is it?
RD: No. We must get away from thinking that just because DNA is incredibly small from a visual standpoint that somehow its small size reflects the level of complexity that is represented in its structure. If anything we should marvel that something so small can have so many separate subunits that each has its own place and function. So, today I want to focus on the fact that DNA is a 4 dimensional information storage system. There’s a great article about this on creation.com which is the website for Creation Ministries International. One of the key takeaways from this article, as well as many other articles that are on their website, is that DNA’s information function is not dependent on its chemistry. Just as the chemistry of ink and paper do not determine the information that is present on a printed page, the chemical components that comprise DNA do not determine the messages that it stores and sends.
VK: That’s a pretty radical thought but it was one which Dr. Jonathan Sarfati told us about when he was a guest on Anchored by Truth. Paper and ink have chemical elements that form them, and permit them to be useful to store and communicate information but the pen and ink don’t control the information. It requires intelligence to use that paper and ink to store or transmit information. This is the same thing that occurs with DNA. And it comes as a surprise to most people.
RD: Yes. We are so surrounded by the pseudo-scientific narrative that life arose randomly from inanimate matter that even most Christians are beguiled thinking that our bodies are the product of matter and energy. It can come as a bit of a shock to realize that we are the product of so much more. The way that DNA functions is a perfect example of that. The first level of information that DNA contains is simply the order of the “letters” – the nucleotide base pairs. The first 15 letters of DNA in the human “Y” chromosome are “CTAACCCTAACCCTA.” The entire human genome has been mapped.
VK: Now just about everyone has heard about “genes” and most people know that genes control inherited characteristics. A gene is a small section of DNA that contains the instructions for a specific molecule, usually a protein. The purpose of genes is to store information. Each gene contains the information required to build specific proteins needed in an organism. The human genome contains 20,687 protein-coding genes. Genes come in different forms, called alleles. The genes for blue eyes and brown eyes obviously code for the same characteristic, eye color. But the genes for brown eyes and blue eyes are different. So, they would be alleles.
RD: So, this first level of information is just a sequence of letters. That seems pretty simple. But you start to get a hint of the other levels of information when you realize that we have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes but our bodies produce over 100,000 different proteins. Some estimates are that the human body produces over 300,000 distinct proteins.
VK: Twenty thousand genes seem like a lot but it was actually a much lower number than expected. The low number of genes in the human genome was troubling for several reasons. First, it meant that human beings did not have that many more genes than organisms that were much simpler. Second, it meant we were creating a great many proteins from relatively few genes. Scientist had no idea how this could be done on such a large scale. And third, the complexity of the human genome just kept multiplying the barriers to envisaging how such sophistication could arise by random and chaotic forces.
RD: When science first discovered genes they thought they had discovered the secret that solved the mystery of how one generation passed various traits to another. Scientists initially saw the gene as the master controller that regulates the outward expression of the attributes of an organism. This idea was popularized in Richard Dawkins’ book, The Selfish Gene. But that initial model turned out, as so often happens with God’s creation, to be far too simple. It had become conventional wisdom to say that any characteristics we acquire during our lives cannot be passed to our kids. But we now know that while this idea was partially true, it is an incomplete truth. In fact, there are times when characteristics acquired by a parent are passed to a child and there is now an entire branch of study called “epigenetics” to understand how this happens. But the idea that the outward interactions of an organism with its environment might pass information back to the genome, or even just affects how the genome performs its function was completely rejected for decades. Then came the science of what is now called epigenetics.
VK: The CDC defines epigenetics as the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Marc Ambler who was on the board of Creation Ministries International said “[Epigenetics] poses a profound challenge to evolution because it suggests that latent genetic information of sorts is sitting in the DNA waiting for a particular environment in order to be switched on or off. It is like information in a book with certain pages stapled together, only to be opened and the information acted upon in certain environmental circumstances. If evolution occurs by natural selection, via the environment culling or conserving the effect of random mutations, how can there possibly be a ‘suite’ of genetic information just waiting there to be switched on by an environment to which the organism has yet to be exposed?”
RD: Yes. Now I just to remind everyone what this discussion is all about. The fact that a single gene may code for more than one protein and that our DNA may be affected by our environment is strongly suggestive of the fact that the first level of information in DNA – the sequence of the letters – does not tell the whole story. At first, after the initial discover of DNA, scientists thought they had the key to whole biological puzzle. The idea was that if we could just “learn the code” – in effect figure out the sequence - we could perform miracles. That’s why scientists petitioned the US government in the 1990’s to fund the sequencing of the human genome. And they did. And after doing so we found out that the sequence of the letters in human DNA was only the beginning of understanding DNA. Because DNA is far more complicated than just its very complex sequence of letters.
VK: So, if the sequence of the letters in DNA is the first level of information, what is the second level?
RD: The second dimension of the genome deals with the way one section of DNA interacts with another section. It’s easy enough to create a visual depiction of the first dimension of DNA. It is essentially just a long sequence of the letters A, C, T, and G. But trying to draw a pictorial representation of the second dimension would create a dizzying array of lines and arrows that connect different parts of the linear string of DNA. The depiction would be so complicated it would be as if you were standing in the midst of a galaxy with beams of light crossing across one another.
VK: Biologist Dr. Robert Carter has said this about the second informational dimension of DNA. “The second dimension deals with things like specificity factors, enhancers, repressors, activators, and transcription factors. These are proteins that are coded in the DNA, but they move to another part of the genome after they are made and turn something on or off. But there are additional things happening in this dimension. During the process of protein manufacturing, a gene is “read” by the cell during a process called transcription. Here, the DNA is copied into a molecule called RNA. The RNA is then translated into a protein. …But in a process called post-transcriptional regulation, the RNA can be inactivated or activated by other factors (like [micro RNAs]) coded elsewhere in the genome.
... One of the greatest mysteries is how only about 22,000 genes can produce more than 300,000 distinct proteins. The answer is that the cell goes through a process called alternate splicing, where the genes are sliced and diced and different parts are used by different cells at different times and under different circumstances to produce the many different proteins. This incredibly complex process is just one part of that second dimension of the genome.”
RD: The complexity the first dimension of DNA helps put to rest the idea that the chemical structure of DNA is what controls DNA’s function within a cell. Well, if the first dimension began the process, the second dimension of information contained within DNA puts a stake in its heart. Simply put, human beings have not been able to create any information systems that have this level of complexity and interactivity. We are well familiar with information systems like written communication that transmit information be reading something from right to left or left to right. But to create an information system where information is not only derived from reading each letter or word in one direction but where that system provides meaningful information connecting every 5th word, 10th word, and 20th word would boggle our minds. Yet even this isn’t the end of the information that resides within DNA. There are still more dimensions.
VK: Dr. Carter has also written that, “The third dimension deals with how the shape of the DNA molecule affects the expression and control of different genes. We have learned that sections of DNA that are buried deep within the coiled-up DNA cannot be activated easily. So genes that are used often are generally easily accessible. Thus, when God wrote out the information in the genome along that one-dimensional strand, He intentionally put things in a certain order so that they would be in the correct place when the DNA was folded into a 3-D shape.”
RD: Yes. Like most components of the cell it would be extremely impractical for the body to store DNA in a linear state. The DNA in a single cell would be about 6 feet long if it were laid out in a straight line. It would be extremely thin but it would stretch for 6 feet. The National Institutes for Health have estimated that the DNA present in a human body would be over 67 Billion miles long if all the strands were laid end to end – that’s the equivalent of 150,000 trips to the moon – and back. To store all that DNA the body coils it in tight coils that fit within the nuclei of the various cells. Therefore, in the human body DNA is found in a 3 dimensional shape not a straight line which would be 2 dimensions. This adds complexity to the issue of how the body can acquire the information stored in the genes that are on the DNA. As Dr. Carter mentioned we now know that the genes that are used most often are stored on the outside of the 3 dimensional structure where they are most easily accessible. Moreover, sometimes as we’ve alluded to above the various genes sometimes operate in cooperation with other genes. Well, we now know that genes that are used together are generally found next to each other in the 3 dimensional storage arrangement even when those genes are found on different chromosomes.
VK: It’s like a homeowner who is organizing his garage. In the garage they may have some items they use in the garden, some that are used for home repairs, some that are needed for the cars and trucks, and maybe some that they only need once a year like the Christmas decorations. A wise homeowner is likely to organize the garage so the garden shears are close to the rakes rather than with the Christmas light strings and nativity set. But it goes without saying that when the homeowner does this it is because the homeowner knows and understands the use of the things they are storing. In putting things away in the garage they are applying information and intelligence. And, in fact, the storage system that is represented in how DNA is stored within a cell is far more complicated that even the storage system used in the largest industrial warehouses.
RD: Exactly. We still need to talk about the 4th dimension of information that is found in DNA but since we’re running out of time I want to give our listeners a very inexact model for DNA’s amazing information system. Imagine that you found a long, thin plastic tube. As you examined the tube you realized that written on the outside in letters that spiraled around the tube was a list of ingredients for an amazing 7 course meal. At the bottom of the tube the final line said “twist this tube 3 times.” After you did so you found out that the letters now gave you all the steps in preparing the ingredients – the chopping, slicing, dicing, grating, etc. Then the final instruction said hold near the stove. And when you did so you found out that certain portions of the letters now gave you precise instructions for the cooking. The last line of illuminated letters now said, “place near the completed dishes.” And when you did that you found out that different letters were now lit up which told you how to garnish, arrange, put on final toppings, and serve. You get the idea. No human technology would permit us to create an information storage system that sophisticated yet we’re asked to believe that random chance built a biological information system that is thousands or millions of times more elegant.
VK: Well, all that has made me a little hungry but it does make the point. We’re familiar with single dimension information systems because that’s what we experience in our daily lives. Probably, with a lot of effort and planning, we might create a single system that has multiple dimensions of information. But those systems certainly wouldn’t run into the billions of letter or symbols that served multiple tasks simultaneously. The sophistication of DNA eludes us even now. The only reasonable explanation for DNA’s relentless display of information sophistication is because it was prepared and created by the Ultimate, Infinite Designer. It’s just a little bit silly to believe that unintelligent and undirected matter and energy could produce DNA when even the most intelligent scientists could not do so. But God could and that’s what our opening scripture from Hebrews tells us. This sounds like a time to go to God I prayer. Since our children are back in school and busily working their way through the academic year, today let’s listen to a prayer for all of them who could benefit from a little divine help with upcoming tests.
---- PRAYER FOR TAKING A TEST
VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”
If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!”
(Bible Quote from the New International Version)
Hebrews, chapter 3, verse 4, New International Version
The human genome is amazingly complex (creation.com)
Four Dimensional Genome (creation.com)
Splicing and dicing the human genome (creation.com)
We are less than dust (creation.com)
Epigenetics challenges neo-Darwinism (creation.com)
View all episodes
By R.D.Fierro
5
11 ratings
Episode 198 – Eternal Information – Part 6 – Living Information
Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.
Script:
For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything.
Hebrews, chapter 3, verse 4, New International Version
********
VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. Thank you for joining us here today on Anchored by Truth. For several episodes we have been doing a series we call “Eternal Information.” We do series like Eternal Information to help people focus on a foundational truth about the universe we see around us. The universe exhibits order and design. Albert Einstein recognized this simple fact and famously said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible.” Other scientists have noted that the universe displays all the elements that we see in the best manufacturing systems that we have today. The same pieces and parts are used to build structures as diverse as snowflakes, galaxies, stars, and puppy dogs. To help us explore even more about the marvel that is the universe and especially life, today in the studio we have RD. RD is an author and the founder of Crystal Sea Books. RD, the universe is amazing isn’t it?
RD: Yes, it is. The universe is so consistent in how it works that we can analyze the composition of stars that are billions and billions of miles away from our little earth. There is no way we could do that unless we knew that the same constituent parts that make up our sun, our earth, and even our bodies were also present in all the other parts of the universe. And that’s the reason that we wanted to undertake this series on eternal information. Just think about it for a second and you quickly realize that the presence of design requires a designer. The presence of organization requires an organizer. Yet this is the very thing that atheists and radical secularists exclude a priori. Why would they do this? There’s only one reason. It’s not that they don’t realize that God exists. They do. All people do. It’s that they don’t like the implications of acknowledging that existence. Because it would mean they would have to make changes to their lives and worldview.
VK: So, today we want to go more deeply into the order and design that are present in living creatures. We began this discussion last time on Anchored by Truth when we did a high level overview of some of the basic elements of biochemistry. And in that discussion we noted that the basic unit which is present in all living things is a cell. Some cells have a nucleus and some don’t. But all living things are comprised of cells. And cells, despite their tiny size, are exceedingly sophisticated structures. Anyone who has ever contemplated the properties of a living cell for even a moment has to recognize that human beings still do not have the ability to create structures or systems with that level of design finesse. Our most elegant examples of technology and advanced design pale in comparison to the complexity present to every cell on the planet. Yet, the most amazing thing is that some people continue to insist that all of that sophisticated complexity could have arisen by chance. I heard someone say once that its far more likely you could put butter, eggs, sugar, and milk in a bowl, leave it in the sun, and wait for it to turn into a cake than expect the first cell to have come together by chance.
RD: Right. The right ingredients are necessary to make a cake but not sufficient. Making cakes takes information – a recipe. And it takes a chef who will apply the recipe – correctly! And today we’re going to continue to pointing to other evidence that shows the absurdity of believing that random and chaotic activity could generate an integrated structure that has more than 100 billion subordinate parts.
VK: A lot more ingredients than it takes to make a cake …
RD: True dat – and all those ingredients must be present in just the right places and just the right amounts for life to be possible. Today we want to do an in-depth look at the most amazing information storage medium on the planet – DNA. We’re doing this because we want people to have facts that run directly counter to the assertion that random chance could have produced living creatures.
VK: Well, just as a brief review to set the stage – we have already learned several critical things about the biomolecular structure of living things. As you said, the basic structure of all life on earth, whether plant or animal, is a cell. Some creatures like bacteria are only a single cell. Human beings contain over 35 trillion cells. Regardless of the number all life on earth is cellular based. Cells are composed of permeable membranes that encase the components of the cell that actually carry on the business of life. Those components include protein “machines” and nucleic [NU-CLAY-ICK] acids. The most famous nucleic acid is, of course, DNA. Proteins are built from organic compounds called amino acids. Amino acids are small compounds consisting of 10 to 20 atoms. There are hundreds of known amino acids but only 20 of those are used by living creatures.
RD: And DNA is built from compounds called nucleotides [NU-KLEE-O-TIDES]. Nucleotides consist of a sugar, a nitrogen containing base, and a phosphate group. The nucleotides of DNA are linked together through their phosphate group and they differ only in the structure of their nitrogen containing base. Specifically, there are 4 bases that comprise the structure of DNA: adenine [a-duh-neen], guanine [gwaa-neen}, cytosine [sai-tuh-seen], and thymine [thigh-mean]. They are usually abbreviated A, G, C, and T. So, these are the “letters” of the genetic alphabet. For chemical reasons the adenine in DNA tends to form an association with thymine and guanine forms an association with cytosine. And DNA is made up of two long strands – the famous double helix – joined by means of the associations: A with T and C with G. This means that the two strands are complimentary. From a DNA standpoint the simplest form of life that lives independently is a bacterium known as mycoplasma genitalium. It has about 500,000 base pairs in its DNA strand. Human beings by contrast have 3 Billion base pairs in our DNA.
VK: So, DNA even at its simplest is not a simple structure. I think a lot of people are misled by the fact that we are talking about things that are so small they can only be seen by sophisticated microscopes. I think some people associate small size with simplicity. But with respect to DNA that’s not true at all, is it?
RD: No. We must get away from thinking that just because DNA is incredibly small from a visual standpoint that somehow its small size reflects the level of complexity that is represented in its structure. If anything we should marvel that something so small can have so many separate subunits that each has its own place and function. So, today I want to focus on the fact that DNA is a 4 dimensional information storage system. There’s a great article about this on creation.com which is the website for Creation Ministries International. One of the key takeaways from this article, as well as many other articles that are on their website, is that DNA’s information function is not dependent on its chemistry. Just as the chemistry of ink and paper do not determine the information that is present on a printed page, the chemical components that comprise DNA do not determine the messages that it stores and sends.
VK: That’s a pretty radical thought but it was one which Dr. Jonathan Sarfati told us about when he was a guest on Anchored by Truth. Paper and ink have chemical elements that form them, and permit them to be useful to store and communicate information but the pen and ink don’t control the information. It requires intelligence to use that paper and ink to store or transmit information. This is the same thing that occurs with DNA. And it comes as a surprise to most people.
RD: Yes. We are so surrounded by the pseudo-scientific narrative that life arose randomly from inanimate matter that even most Christians are beguiled thinking that our bodies are the product of matter and energy. It can come as a bit of a shock to realize that we are the product of so much more. The way that DNA functions is a perfect example of that. The first level of information that DNA contains is simply the order of the “letters” – the nucleotide base pairs. The first 15 letters of DNA in the human “Y” chromosome are “CTAACCCTAACCCTA.” The entire human genome has been mapped.
VK: Now just about everyone has heard about “genes” and most people know that genes control inherited characteristics. A gene is a small section of DNA that contains the instructions for a specific molecule, usually a protein. The purpose of genes is to store information. Each gene contains the information required to build specific proteins needed in an organism. The human genome contains 20,687 protein-coding genes. Genes come in different forms, called alleles. The genes for blue eyes and brown eyes obviously code for the same characteristic, eye color. But the genes for brown eyes and blue eyes are different. So, they would be alleles.
RD: So, this first level of information is just a sequence of letters. That seems pretty simple. But you start to get a hint of the other levels of information when you realize that we have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes but our bodies produce over 100,000 different proteins. Some estimates are that the human body produces over 300,000 distinct proteins.
VK: Twenty thousand genes seem like a lot but it was actually a much lower number than expected. The low number of genes in the human genome was troubling for several reasons. First, it meant that human beings did not have that many more genes than organisms that were much simpler. Second, it meant we were creating a great many proteins from relatively few genes. Scientist had no idea how this could be done on such a large scale. And third, the complexity of the human genome just kept multiplying the barriers to envisaging how such sophistication could arise by random and chaotic forces.
RD: When science first discovered genes they thought they had discovered the secret that solved the mystery of how one generation passed various traits to another. Scientists initially saw the gene as the master controller that regulates the outward expression of the attributes of an organism. This idea was popularized in Richard Dawkins’ book, The Selfish Gene. But that initial model turned out, as so often happens with God’s creation, to be far too simple. It had become conventional wisdom to say that any characteristics we acquire during our lives cannot be passed to our kids. But we now know that while this idea was partially true, it is an incomplete truth. In fact, there are times when characteristics acquired by a parent are passed to a child and there is now an entire branch of study called “epigenetics” to understand how this happens. But the idea that the outward interactions of an organism with its environment might pass information back to the genome, or even just affects how the genome performs its function was completely rejected for decades. Then came the science of what is now called epigenetics.
VK: The CDC defines epigenetics as the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work. Marc Ambler who was on the board of Creation Ministries International said “[Epigenetics] poses a profound challenge to evolution because it suggests that latent genetic information of sorts is sitting in the DNA waiting for a particular environment in order to be switched on or off. It is like information in a book with certain pages stapled together, only to be opened and the information acted upon in certain environmental circumstances. If evolution occurs by natural selection, via the environment culling or conserving the effect of random mutations, how can there possibly be a ‘suite’ of genetic information just waiting there to be switched on by an environment to which the organism has yet to be exposed?”
RD: Yes. Now I just to remind everyone what this discussion is all about. The fact that a single gene may code for more than one protein and that our DNA may be affected by our environment is strongly suggestive of the fact that the first level of information in DNA – the sequence of the letters – does not tell the whole story. At first, after the initial discover of DNA, scientists thought they had the key to whole biological puzzle. The idea was that if we could just “learn the code” – in effect figure out the sequence - we could perform miracles. That’s why scientists petitioned the US government in the 1990’s to fund the sequencing of the human genome. And they did. And after doing so we found out that the sequence of the letters in human DNA was only the beginning of understanding DNA. Because DNA is far more complicated than just its very complex sequence of letters.
VK: So, if the sequence of the letters in DNA is the first level of information, what is the second level?
RD: The second dimension of the genome deals with the way one section of DNA interacts with another section. It’s easy enough to create a visual depiction of the first dimension of DNA. It is essentially just a long sequence of the letters A, C, T, and G. But trying to draw a pictorial representation of the second dimension would create a dizzying array of lines and arrows that connect different parts of the linear string of DNA. The depiction would be so complicated it would be as if you were standing in the midst of a galaxy with beams of light crossing across one another.
VK: Biologist Dr. Robert Carter has said this about the second informational dimension of DNA. “The second dimension deals with things like specificity factors, enhancers, repressors, activators, and transcription factors. These are proteins that are coded in the DNA, but they move to another part of the genome after they are made and turn something on or off. But there are additional things happening in this dimension. During the process of protein manufacturing, a gene is “read” by the cell during a process called transcription. Here, the DNA is copied into a molecule called RNA. The RNA is then translated into a protein. …But in a process called post-transcriptional regulation, the RNA can be inactivated or activated by other factors (like [micro RNAs]) coded elsewhere in the genome.
... One of the greatest mysteries is how only about 22,000 genes can produce more than 300,000 distinct proteins. The answer is that the cell goes through a process called alternate splicing, where the genes are sliced and diced and different parts are used by different cells at different times and under different circumstances to produce the many different proteins. This incredibly complex process is just one part of that second dimension of the genome.”
RD: The complexity the first dimension of DNA helps put to rest the idea that the chemical structure of DNA is what controls DNA’s function within a cell. Well, if the first dimension began the process, the second dimension of information contained within DNA puts a stake in its heart. Simply put, human beings have not been able to create any information systems that have this level of complexity and interactivity. We are well familiar with information systems like written communication that transmit information be reading something from right to left or left to right. But to create an information system where information is not only derived from reading each letter or word in one direction but where that system provides meaningful information connecting every 5th word, 10th word, and 20th word would boggle our minds. Yet even this isn’t the end of the information that resides within DNA. There are still more dimensions.
VK: Dr. Carter has also written that, “The third dimension deals with how the shape of the DNA molecule affects the expression and control of different genes. We have learned that sections of DNA that are buried deep within the coiled-up DNA cannot be activated easily. So genes that are used often are generally easily accessible. Thus, when God wrote out the information in the genome along that one-dimensional strand, He intentionally put things in a certain order so that they would be in the correct place when the DNA was folded into a 3-D shape.”
RD: Yes. Like most components of the cell it would be extremely impractical for the body to store DNA in a linear state. The DNA in a single cell would be about 6 feet long if it were laid out in a straight line. It would be extremely thin but it would stretch for 6 feet. The National Institutes for Health have estimated that the DNA present in a human body would be over 67 Billion miles long if all the strands were laid end to end – that’s the equivalent of 150,000 trips to the moon – and back. To store all that DNA the body coils it in tight coils that fit within the nuclei of the various cells. Therefore, in the human body DNA is found in a 3 dimensional shape not a straight line which would be 2 dimensions. This adds complexity to the issue of how the body can acquire the information stored in the genes that are on the DNA. As Dr. Carter mentioned we now know that the genes that are used most often are stored on the outside of the 3 dimensional structure where they are most easily accessible. Moreover, sometimes as we’ve alluded to above the various genes sometimes operate in cooperation with other genes. Well, we now know that genes that are used together are generally found next to each other in the 3 dimensional storage arrangement even when those genes are found on different chromosomes.
VK: It’s like a homeowner who is organizing his garage. In the garage they may have some items they use in the garden, some that are used for home repairs, some that are needed for the cars and trucks, and maybe some that they only need once a year like the Christmas decorations. A wise homeowner is likely to organize the garage so the garden shears are close to the rakes rather than with the Christmas light strings and nativity set. But it goes without saying that when the homeowner does this it is because the homeowner knows and understands the use of the things they are storing. In putting things away in the garage they are applying information and intelligence. And, in fact, the storage system that is represented in how DNA is stored within a cell is far more complicated that even the storage system used in the largest industrial warehouses.
RD: Exactly. We still need to talk about the 4th dimension of information that is found in DNA but since we’re running out of time I want to give our listeners a very inexact model for DNA’s amazing information system. Imagine that you found a long, thin plastic tube. As you examined the tube you realized that written on the outside in letters that spiraled around the tube was a list of ingredients for an amazing 7 course meal. At the bottom of the tube the final line said “twist this tube 3 times.” After you did so you found out that the letters now gave you all the steps in preparing the ingredients – the chopping, slicing, dicing, grating, etc. Then the final instruction said hold near the stove. And when you did so you found out that certain portions of the letters now gave you precise instructions for the cooking. The last line of illuminated letters now said, “place near the completed dishes.” And when you did that you found out that different letters were now lit up which told you how to garnish, arrange, put on final toppings, and serve. You get the idea. No human technology would permit us to create an information storage system that sophisticated yet we’re asked to believe that random chance built a biological information system that is thousands or millions of times more elegant.
VK: Well, all that has made me a little hungry but it does make the point. We’re familiar with single dimension information systems because that’s what we experience in our daily lives. Probably, with a lot of effort and planning, we might create a single system that has multiple dimensions of information. But those systems certainly wouldn’t run into the billions of letter or symbols that served multiple tasks simultaneously. The sophistication of DNA eludes us even now. The only reasonable explanation for DNA’s relentless display of information sophistication is because it was prepared and created by the Ultimate, Infinite Designer. It’s just a little bit silly to believe that unintelligent and undirected matter and energy could produce DNA when even the most intelligent scientists could not do so. But God could and that’s what our opening scripture from Hebrews tells us. This sounds like a time to go to God I prayer. Since our children are back in school and busily working their way through the academic year, today let’s listen to a prayer for all of them who could benefit from a little divine help with upcoming tests.
---- PRAYER FOR TAKING A TEST
VK: We’d like to remind our audience that a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics so if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.”
If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not perfect but our Boss is!”
(Bible Quote from the New International Version)
Hebrews, chapter 3, verse 4, New International Version
The human genome is amazingly complex (creation.com)
Four Dimensional Genome (creation.com)
Splicing and dicing the human genome (creation.com)
We are less than dust (creation.com)
Epigenetics challenges neo-Darwinism (creation.com)