excreationist
Married mouth-breather
OkThink of music. Notes on a sheet symbolize actions taken with an instrument. The musician sees the songwriter's intent, with accompanying notations, and tries to reproduce it.@Keith&Co.
I found this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_a...lternative_codons_in_other_translation_tables
It shows that the translation between DNA/RNA and amino acids can change in some species.... so they are partly arbitrary....
In that case there are a few notes that the music box is capable of making and when there are bumps on the drum a note is pretty much instantly played. If there is a bump for C2 and E2 at the same time then notes of about 65 Hz and 82 Hz are made simultaneously. If the second bump appeared later then there would be a 65 Hz (approx) note then a 82 Hz. I'd say it is a one dimensional system - musical notes varying in a linear way....Think of a music box. Bumps on the drum strike keys and produce notes. The action of the drum is mechanical. A bump in a certain position will make a certain note.
There's no ''symbol' involved in the box's operation,. The keys do not interpret the bumps. If some debris gets stuck to the drum, it will produce a note just like the official bumps.
Unlike the music box DNA/RNA handles the sequence a lot differently....
The 20 amino acids:
Like post #14 let's consider 3 bases in RNA - uracil, cytosine, and guanine...
uracil followed by cytosine followed by guanine - Serine
uracil followed by guanine followed by cytosine - Cysteine (one of the only animo acids with Sulfur)
cytosine followed by uracil followed by guanine - Leucine
cytosine followed by guanine followed by uracil - Arginine
guanine followed by uracil followed by cytosine - Valine
guanine followed by cytosine followed by uracil - Alanine (almost identical to Valine)
Unlike a linear series of notes it works like a 3 dimensional matrix.... each axis has 4 possibilities giving 64 possible combinations.... where the sequence makes a big difference.... unlike the music box example.
That isn't the case... see:DNA is chemicals that initiate chemicals in dependable ways. Researchers use symbols to map it, but UUU could have been AAA. No need for an alternate universe, just different researchers. But the chemical reactions would be the same.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_a...lternative_codons_in_other_translation_tables
e.g. Vertebrates have different rules when translating from DNA/RNA to amino acids compared to normal DNA/RNA.... there are 4 differences including:
ATA/AUA normally translates to isoleucine but in vertebrates it involves methionine.... and TGA/UGA normally translates to "stop" but in vertebrates it means Tryptophan.... and "stop" is quite different to creating Tryptophan....
And yeast has 8 differences to normal DNA/RNA...... etc....