DNA

Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms (with the exception of RNA viruses). The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in regulating the use of this genetic information. Along with RNA and proteins, DNA is one of the three major macromolecules that are essential for all known forms of life.

The genetic messages encoded within our DNA molecules will provide the ultimate answers to the chemical underpinnings of human existence.
James D. Watson

See also:

Evolution

RNA

Quotes

The intricate DNA genetic code makes it possible for the individual to inherit not only simple physical characteristics, such as size, shape and chemical makeup, but also a whole set of propensities for particular social behavior which goes with a given physiology. ~ Lionel Tiger

DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. —Richard Dawkins

• DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.
  • Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (1995), p. 133.
• It is raining DNA outside. On the bank of the Oxford canal at the bottom of my garden is a large willow tree, and it is pumping downy seeds into the air... It is raining instructions out there; it’s raining programs; it’s raining tree-growing, fluff-spreading, algorithms. That is not a metaphor, it is the plain truth. It couldn’t be any plainer if it were raining floppy disks.
  • Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p. 111.

• There is enough storage capacity in the DNA of a single lily seed or a single salamander sperm to store the Encyclopædia Britannica 60 times over. Some species of the unjustly called ‘primitive’ amoebas have as much information in their DNA as 1,000 Encyclopædia Britannicas.
  • Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p. 116.

• It is so efficient that all the information . . . necessary to specify the design of all the species of organisms which have ever existed on the planet . . . could be held in a teaspoon and there would still be room left for all the information in every book ever written.
  • Michael Denton, molecular biologist and "intelligent design" creationist, said of the genetic code (DNA) inside a cell, in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 334. Quoted in The Watchtower magazine, October 1, 1994.

• Molecular biology has also shown that the basic design of the cell system is essentially the same in all living systems on earth from bacteria to mammals. In all organisms the roles of DNA, mRNA and protein are identical. The meaning of the genetic code is also virtually identical in all cells. The size, structure and component design of the protein synthetic machinery is practically the same in all cells. In terms of their basic biochemical design, therefore no living system can be thought of as being primitive or ancestral with respect to any other system, nor is there the slightest empirical hint of an evolutionary sequence among all the incredibly diverse cells on earth.
  • Michael Denton, in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, page 250. Quoted in Awake! magazine, January 22, 1990; Fraud in Science—The Greatest Fraud of All.
• The results are plainly legible to those who study the human genome today. Between a fifth and a quarter of the DNA of most African-Americans can be traced back to Europeans. At least half of the inhabitants of Hawaii are of 'mixed' ancestry. Likewise, the DNA of today's Japanese population indicates that there was intermarriage between early settlers from Korea and the indigenous Jomonese people. Most of the Y chromosomes found in Jewish males are the same as those found among other Middle Eastern men; for all their bitter enmity, Palestinians and Israelis are genetically not so very different. The evolutionist Richard Lewontin famously calculated that around 85 per cent of the total amount of genetic variation in humans occurs among individuals in an average population; only 6 per cent occurs among races. The genetic variants that affect skin colour, hair type and facial features involve an insignificant amount of the billions of nucleotides in an individual's DNA. To some biologists, this means that, strictly speaking, human races do not exist.
  • Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. xliii

• DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other.
  • Human Genome Project ^{[citation needed]}

• The way DNA encodes information is analogous to how we arrange the letters of the alphabet into words and phrases with specific meanings. The word rat, for example, evokes a rodent; the words tarand art, which contain the same letters, mean very different things. We can think of nucleotides as a four-letter alphabet. Specific sequences of these four nucleotides encode the information in genes.
  Many genes provide the blueprints for making proteins, which are the major players in building and maintaining the cell and carrying out its activities.
  • Jane B. Reece, Lisa A. Urry, et al. Campbell Biology (10th ed., 2014), Ch. 1. Evolution, the Themes of Biology, and Scientific Inquiry

• Does the Covid-19 vaccine change your DNA? Not directly, no. But yes, thanks to your own immune system, your DNA is a tiny bit altered after you get any vaccine.
  • Steven Salzberg, Yes, The Vaccine Changes Your DNA. A Tiny Bit. That’s A Good Thing., Forbes, 29 November 2021

• There's no genetic basis for any kind of rigid ethnic or racial classification... I'm always asked is there Greek DNA or an Italian gene, but, of course, there isn't... We're very closely related.
  • Bryan Sykes, geneticist and Oxford professor. The Watchtower, July 1, 2011, page 23; Does God value one race above others?

• Now we know that the intricate DNA genetic code makes it possible for the individual to inherit not only simple physical characteristics, such as size, shape and chemical makeup, but also a whole set of propensities for particular social behavior which goes with a given physiology.
  • Lionel Tiger, anthropologist, in "Male Dominance? Yes, Alas. A Sexist Plot? No.; Not a sexist plot", The New York Times (25 October 1970).

• When finally interpreted, the genetic messages encoded within our DNA molecules will provide the ultimate answers to the chemical underpinnings of human existence.
  • James D. Watson, one of the scientists credited with discovering the structure of the now famous DNA molecule. In "The Human Genome Project: past, present, and future." Science, 6 April 1990; 248:44-48.

• Love is merely a trick the DNA plays to replicate itself.
  • the character Tyr Anasazi played by Keith Hamilton Cobb in the episode “Star-Crossed” of Season 1 of the American-Canadian television series Andromeda