I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
Psalm 139:14
"The information in DNA is spelled out using four different chemical ‘letters’: A, T, C, and G.
These letters have a vital property which allows information to be transmitted: A pairs only with T, and C only with G.
Due to the chemical structure of the bases, each pair is like a rung or step on a spiral staircase, the famous ‘double helix’ shape.
Each DNA molecule has two strands, effectively the sides of the spiral staircase.
The letter pairs form the steps, with A always opposite T and C always opposite G. The two strands can be separated and copied independently to form TWO spiral staircases, such that the new strands are exact copies of the original information.
The copying is far more precise than laboratory chemistry could manage, because there is editing (proof-reading and error-checking) machinery, again encoded in the DNA.
This machinery keeps the error rate down to less than one error per 100 million letters.
Q: But, since the editing machinery itself requires proper proofreading and editing during its manufacturing, how would the information for the machinery be transmitted accurately before the machinery was in place and working properly?
Lest it be argued that the accuracy could be achieved stepwise through selection, note that a high degree of accuracy is needed to prevent ‘error catastrophe’ in the first place—from the accumulation of ‘noise’ in the form of junk proteins specified by the damaged DNA."
CMI
Psalm 139:14
"The information in DNA is spelled out using four different chemical ‘letters’: A, T, C, and G.
These letters have a vital property which allows information to be transmitted: A pairs only with T, and C only with G.
Due to the chemical structure of the bases, each pair is like a rung or step on a spiral staircase, the famous ‘double helix’ shape.
Each DNA molecule has two strands, effectively the sides of the spiral staircase.
The letter pairs form the steps, with A always opposite T and C always opposite G. The two strands can be separated and copied independently to form TWO spiral staircases, such that the new strands are exact copies of the original information.
The copying is far more precise than laboratory chemistry could manage, because there is editing (proof-reading and error-checking) machinery, again encoded in the DNA.
This machinery keeps the error rate down to less than one error per 100 million letters.
Q: But, since the editing machinery itself requires proper proofreading and editing during its manufacturing, how would the information for the machinery be transmitted accurately before the machinery was in place and working properly?
Lest it be argued that the accuracy could be achieved stepwise through selection, note that a high degree of accuracy is needed to prevent ‘error catastrophe’ in the first place—from the accumulation of ‘noise’ in the form of junk proteins specified by the damaged DNA."
CMI