The Biology of Belief - Bruce H. Lipton [24]
Can you imagine how excited cell biologists were when they figured out how the protein assembly machines work? Cells exploit the movements of these protein assembly machines to empower specific metabolic and behavioral functions. The constant, shape-shifting movements of proteins—which can occur thousands of times in a single second—are the movements that propel life.
The Primacy of DNA
You’ll notice that, in the above section, I didn’t discuss DNA at all. That’s because it is the changing of the proteins’ electromagnetic charges that is responsible for their behavior-generating movement, not DNA. How did we get to the widespread and often-cited notion that genes “control” biology? In the Origin of Species, Darwin suggested that “hereditary” factors were passed on from generation to generation, controlling the traits of the offspring. Darwin’s influence was so great that scientists myopically focused on identifying that hereditary material which, they thought, controlled life.
In 1910, intensive microscopic analyses revealed that the hereditary information passed on generation after generation was contained in chromosomes, thread-like structures that become visible in the cell just before it divides into two “daughter” cells. Chromosomes are incorporated into the daughter cell’s largest organelle, the nucleus. When scientists isolated the nucleus, they dissected the chromosomes and found that the hereditary elements were essentially comprised of only two kinds of molecules, protein and DNA. Somehow the protein machinery of life was entangled in the structure and function of these chromosome molecules.
The understanding of the chromosome’s functions was further refined in 1944 when scientists determined that it was DNA that actually contained hereditary information. (Avery, et al, 1944; Lederberg 1994) The experiments that singled out DNA were elegant. These scientists isolated pure DNA from one species of bacteria—let’s call it Species A—and added the pure DNA to cultures containing only Species B bacteria. Within a short time, Species B bacteria began to show hereditary traits that were formerly seen only in Species A. Once it was known that you needed nothing other than DNA to pass on traits, the DNA molecule became a scientific superstar.
It was now left to Watson and Crick to unravel the structure and function of that superstar molecule. DNA molecules are long and threadlike. They are made from four nitrogen-containing chemicals called bases (adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine, or A, T, C, and G). Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA’s structure led to the fact that the sequence of the A, T, C, and G bases in DNA spells out the sequence of amino acids along a protein’s backbone (Watson and Crick 1953). Those long strings of DNA molecules can be subdivided into single genes, segments that provide the blueprint for specific proteins. The code for recreating the protein machinery of the cell had been cracked!
Watson and Crick also explained why DNA is the perfect hereditary molecule. Each DNA strand is normally intertwined with a second strand of DNA, a loosely wrapped configuration known as the “double helix.” The genius of this system is that the sequences of DNA bases on both strands are mirror images of each other. When the two strands of DNA unwind, each single strand contains the information to make an exact, complementary copy of itself. So through a process of separating the strands of a double helix, DNA molecules become self-replicating. This observation led to the assumption that DNA “controlled” its own replication … it was its own “boss.”
The “suggestion” that DNA controlled its own replication and served as the blueprint for the body’s proteins led Francis Crick to create biology’s Central Dogma, the belief that DNA rules. The dogma is so fundamental to modern biology it is essentially written in stone, the equivalent of science’s Ten Commandments. The dogma, also referred to as “the