DNA
DNA was discovered in 1871 in Germany by Friedrich Miescher, in dead white blood cells, and is a biological recipe for a human. Could that information also contain a mark of authorship, or messages?
DNA is made of bases, a technical name for four types of biochemical each of which has at least a one ring structure, and contains nitrogen. These are Thymine, Cytosine, Adenine, and Guanine, which are abbreviated to T, C, A, G. Clusters of various triplet combinations of these, via complex cell machinery cause an individual amino acid to be selected and attached to a growing chain of others, forming a protein. This process is shown in Figures 1 and 2. We can't explain everything here but the interested reader will find plenty of detail elsewhere (e.g., Wikipedia) about any obscure names or processes in the following diagrams. The amino acids are important, because it is them that this website takes as an equivalent to Hebrew letters.
In the table below are the base combinations and the corresponding amino acids and their single letter conventional abbreviations. The Amino Acids are: Phenylalanine, Leucine, Isoleucine, Methionine, Valine, Serine, Proline, Threonine, Alanine, Tyrosine, Histidine, Glutamine, Asparagine, Lysine, Aspartic acid, Glutamic acid, Cysteine, Tryptophan, Arginine, Glycine. Sel is the rare amino acid selenocysteine, which contains the rather exotic element selenium, which definitely occurs in humans, and is given here the symbol Z. The amino acids also have abbreviations like Ala (for Alanine), Arg (for Arginine), Ile (for Isoleucine), etc.
TTT,TTC code for Phenylalanine (Phe/F)
TTA,TTG,CTT,CTC,CTA,CTG Leucine (Leu/L)
ATT,ATC,ATA Isoleucine (Ile, I)
ATG Methionine (Met/M)
GTT,GTC,GTA,GTG Valine (Val/V)
TCT,TCC,TCA,TCG,AGT,AGC Serine (Ser/S)
CCT,CCC,CCA,CCG Proline (Pro/P)
ACT,ACC,ACA,ACG Threonine (Thr/T)
GCT,GCC,GCA,GCG Alanine (Ala/A)
TAT/TAC Tyrosine (Tyr/Y)
TAA Stop (i.e. stop growing the protein chain)
TAG Stop
CAT,CAC Histidine (His/H)
CAA,CAG Glutamine (Gln/Q)
AAT,AAC Asparagine (Asn/N)
AAA,AAG Lysine (Lys/K)
GAT,GAC Aspartic acid (Asp/D)
GAA,GAG Glutamic acid (Glu/E)
TGT,TGC Cysteine (Cys/C)
TGA Selenocysteine/Stop (Sel/Z) stop
TGG Tryptophan (Trp/W)
CGT,CGC,CGA,CGG,AGA,AGG Arginine (Arg/R)
GGT,GGC,GGA,GGG Glycine (Gly/G)
In the table, two of the base combinations do not code for an amino acid, but are a signal to stop lengthening the amino acid chain. The amino acid Methionine (Met/ M) can act as a signal to start it. There are 21 amino acids and 3 stop combinations. This could be counted as anywhere from 21-23 letter equivalents. What language has a number of letters like that? We’ll look at that in a moment. Only a few percent of DNA is arranged in genes. It is recipes for proteins, and this paper concentrates on these. The “junk” DNA which does not, is considered briefly in Technical Notes.
How do we order the amino acids and letters?
I used human amino acid frequency data from a Japanese database (Kazusa DNA Research Institute) which gave me an order of frequency of amino acids greatest to least, that is, those amino acids most commonly found to those least commonly found in humans, coded for within human genes. The order is:
Leu(L), Ser(S), Ala(A), Glu(E), Gly(G), Pro(P), Val(V), Arg(R), Lys(K), Thr(T), Asp(D), Gln(Q), Ile(I), Phe(F), Asn(N), Tyr(Y), Hst(H), Cys(C), Met (M), Trp(W), stop/selen(Z), stop, stop
The most common amino acid, leucine, may possibly stimulate production of muscle protein, but tests in humans so far (elderly men) don’t support this.