Science Mysteries

The Big Bang

DNA Secrets

Science Mysteries

The human genome is comprised of two sets of 23 chromosomes - 46 chromosomes in all. Each parent contributes a set. About 97 percent of the genome consists of sequences that don't code for proteins and have no known function. Within the rest of the genome are estimated 70,000 genes.

 Is non-coding DNA expressing a Language?

In the March 1995 issue of "Scientific American", in the article titled
"Talking Trash" (see below), scientists claim to have found "word" patterns in the "junk" DNA of man. It seems that this junk DNA (segments of the DNA genome which do not encode instructions for the production of proteins) exhibits the same statistical patterns that are found in written languages.

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Talking Trash: What's in a Word?

What's in a word? Several nucleotides, some researchers might say.
By applying statistical methods developed by linguists, investigators have found that "junk" parts of the genomes of many organisms may be expressing a language. These regions traditionally been regarded as 'useless' accumulations of material from millions of years of evolution.

'The feeling is,' says Boston University physicist Eugene Stanley, 'that there's something going on in the non-coding region.'

"Junk DNA" got its name because the nucleotides there (the fundamental pieces of DNA, combined into so-called base pairs) do not encode instructions for making proteins, the basis for life. In fact, the vast majority of genetic material in organisms from bacteria to mammals consists of non-coding DNA segments, which are interspersed with the coding parts. In humans, about 97 percent of the genome is junk. Over the past 10 years biologists began to suspect that this feature is not entirely trivial.

"It's unlikely that every base pair in non-coding DNA is critical, but it is also foolish to say that all of it is junk" notes Robert Tjian, a biochemist at the University of California at Berkeley.

For instance, studies have found that mutations in certain parts of the non-coding regions lead to cancer. Physicists backed the suspicions a few years ago, when those studying fractals noticed certain patterns in junk DNA. They found that non-coding sequences display what are termed long-range correlations. That is, the position of a nucleotide depends to some extent on the placement of other nucleotides.  

Their patterns follow a fractal-like property called 1/f noise, which is inherent in many physical systems that evolve over time, such as electronic circuits, periodicity of earthquakes and even traffic patterns. In the genome, however, the long-range correlations held only for the non-coding sequences; the coding parts exhibited an uncorrelated pattern. Those signs suggested that junk DNA might contain some kind of organized information. To decipher the message, Stanley and his colleagues Rosario N. Mantegna, Sergey V. Buldyrev and Shlomo Haviin collaborated with Amy L Goldberg, Chung-Kang Peng and Michael Simons of Harvard Medical School.  

They borrowed from the work of linguist George K. Zipf who by looking at texts from several languages ranked the frequency with which words occur. Plotting the rank of words against those in a text produces a distinct relation. The most common word "the" in English occurs 10 times, than the 10th most common word, 100 times more often than the 100th most common, and so forth. The researchers tested the relation on 40 DNA sequences of species ranging from viruses to humans.  

They then grouped pairs of nucleotides to create words between three and eight pairs long (it takes three pairs to specify an amino acid). In every case, they found that non-coding regions followed the Zipf relation more closely than did coding regions, suggesting that junk DNA follows the structure of languages.

"We didn't expect the coding DNA to obey Zipf," Stanley notes. "A code literal one if by land, two if by sea."

You can't have any mistakes in a code. Language, in contrast, is a statistical, structured system with built-in redundancies. A few mumbled words or scattered typos usually do not render a sentence incomprehensible.  

In fact, the workers tested this notion of repetition by applying a second analysis, this time from information theorist Claude E Shanon who in the 1950s quantified redundancies in languages. They found that junk DNA contains three to four times the redundancies of coding segments. Because of the statistical nature of the results, the researchers admit their findings are unlikely to help biologists identify functional aspects of junk DNA. Rather the work may indicate something about efficient information storage.

"There has to be some sort of hierarchical arrangement of the information to allow one to use it in an efficient fashion and to have some adaptability and flexibility," Goldberger observes.

Another speculation is quences may be essential to the way DNA has to fold to fit into the nucleus.

Some researchers question whether the group has found anything significant.
One of those is Beniot Mandelbrot of Yale University. In the 1950s the mathematician pointed out that Zipf's law is a statistical numbers game that has little to do with recognizable language features, such as semantics. Moreover, he claims the group made several errors.

'Their evidence does not establish Zipf's law even remotely.' he says.

But such criticisms are not stopping the Boston workers from trying to deciphers junk DNA's tongue.

'It could be a dead language,' Stanley says, 'but the search will be exciting.'

Source: Talking Trash: What's in a Word? Scientific American Mar 95
 

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Genetic Code, I Ching and Hebrew Alphabet

Since the discovery of the DNA double helix molecule in the mid 1950's scientists have been using "language" as a metaphor to help them understand the structures and processes that express life at the bio-chemical level. 

Current research seems to imply that the metaphor may be more literal than previously thought. Suppose that there are stretches of DNA embedded in the genome of man that, when properly "decoded", speak to us in a human language. What language would it be; and what would it say? My work points to the possibility that the language may be Hebrew; or, perhaps, a Proto-Caananite precursor of the Hebrew language.  

My work examines some of the evidence supporting that hypothesis. It is placed here in the hope that it will stimulate discussion and further research. To read it and "play" with it will require one to delve into, what is considered by many to be, mutually exclusive categories of knowledge: science and "the occult". Very few people will be able or willing to entertain the idea that these two antithetical arenas of knowing can illuminate each other. I hope to find a few people who can.  

The I Ching is composed of 64 binary mathematical patterns called hexagrams. Each hexagram is composed of six lines which may be broken (yin) or solid (yang).

A number of years ago I stumbled across a unique similarity of form between the genetic code and a fusion of the Hebrew alphabet with the ancient Chinese divination system of the I Ching, or "Book of Changes." I was studying the I Ching when I came across a book(1) that demonstrated an isomorphism between the 64 symbols of the I Ching (called hexagrams or kua) and the 64 codons of the genetic code. I wondered if there might be, among the mystic or occult systems of other cultures, a corresponding set of symbols for the amino acids of the genetic code for which the 64 codons code. I turned to the Hebrew occult system of Qabalah and discovered the Sefer Yetzirah or "Book of Creation."(2)  

The Sefer Yetzirah is the earliest known text of the Qabalah. Its "magical" purpose is to educate the reader in the process of creation using the Hebrew alphabet as The Creator did. Because the 22 trump cards (also called atu) of the Tarot system of divination have Hebrew letters assigned to them, I thought that maybe I could compare the symbols, images, and concepts in the Tarot trumps with the corresponding contents of the I Ching kua. Then, if there are enough similarities, I could assign each of the trumps to a group of I Ching kua. The result would be a Hebrew letter assignment for each amino acid and punctuation codon in the genetic code.

The assignment of the I Ching symbols to the nucleic acids of the genetic code is based upon similarities of form and function between their respective domains of knowledge. The assignment of Hebrew letters to the groups of I Ching kua is based upon the similarity of content between the atu of the Tarot and the kua of the I Ching. The Hebrew letter PE, on the Tarot atu "The Tower", is assigned to the I Ching kua 20, 23, 24, 3, 42, and 27 because the symbol, image, and concept content of the atu and kua are similar to a high degree. As a result, PE is analogous to the amino acid leucine because the kua assigned to it are analogous to the codons which code for leucine.  

I used the Wilhelm/Baynes(3) translation of the I Ching and Aleister Crowley's "Book of Thoth,"(4) his interpretation of the Tarot. I didn't think that I would find too great a similarity between these two divination systems since Wilhem's I Ching is derived from the very moralistic Confucian school of Oriental philosophy while Crowley's Tarot is a vehicle for his highly idiosyncratic and minimally moralistic system of "sex magic" as a path to enlightenment.  

Imagine my shock and surprise when I discovered that these two diverse approaches to divination, one Eastern and one Western, demonstrated an enormous similarity of content; symbolic, imagistic, and conceptual - WHEN GROUPED AND ARRANGED AS THE NUCLEIC ACIDS AND AMINO ACIDS ARE GROUPED AND ARRANGED IN THE GENETIC CODE.  

I couldn't shake the idea that these two symbol systems may be vehicles for the transport of two halves of what may be a textual virus - set to infect the body politic of Earth at a time when that knowledge is needed. Perhaps somewhere in the vast genetic library that is the human genome there is a clear message, in the Hebrew or a precursor language, from "The Creator(s)."  

If "The Creator(s)" have a sense of humor similar to ours, maybe they would get a kick out of the idea of letting us know, at a future time when we are technologically advanced enough, just who we are and how we came to be.

[...]

INTERPRETING "SEFER YETZIRAH" THROUGH GENETIC ENGINEERING