Looking for sources on the information argument

[DaveB]

@stlyankeefan

@Giltil

The principles of chemistry and physics don’t explain the specific DNA sequences (the functional information) responsable for the dance of life, not at all.

Yes, they really do. I spent much of my research career studying sequence specific DNA binding proteins. Chemistry is key to binding activity and binding activity is key to the function of the proteins I studied. If I had done better in my Biophysical Chemistry class, I could tell you how all of Chemistry comes down to Physics, but I was lost in that class. Maybe someone here can help.

No, they (the principles of chemistry and physics) don’t. The function of a protein is determined by the amino acid sequence and how it folds. The amino acid sequence is determined by the mRNA sequence which is determined by the DNA sequence. This is all part of Crick’s “Sequence Hypothesis”.

There is no chemical law or law of physics which explains the sequence of DNA bases.

The nucleotide backbone (phosphate and sugar) is generic. It is the same for all nucleotides. The base is attached to the sugar molecule, but there is no bond between bases along the length of the DNA strand (I’m not talking about the bond between the base pairs).

Chemistry explains how proteins and rna products operate, but does not explain the DNA sequences from which they were derived.