It's amazing how utterly mad it all is, and yet not only does it work, our simple models of how it works have actually been helpful even though they were wrong. I mean, it's not like there's actually a single value in your DNA that is looked up by some "eyeball creation" machine when it determines the color of your eyes. Rather, there's a whole slew of genes that, when used as a map to build proteins and then, over a cascade of complex reactions, ends up with an eyeball that is also blue (and, additionally, probably more light sensitive, more tolerant to alcohol, and also more likely to have alcohol use disorder)
Source: work for genomenon.com which is like a search engine for genetic research papers)
For example: https://academic.oup.com/view-large/figure/139941708/bty1021...
There was also a partly functioning interactive at http://www.g-language.org/g3/ (click on DNA walk tab) and zoom in.
(1) If we have a rock, can we expect slowly by small modifications to make it into a hammer?
(2) If we have a horse, can we expect slowly by small modifications to make it into a Model T?
(3) ... a mechanical adding machine into an iPhone?
(4) ... a log cabin into the Empire State Building?
(5) ... a pocket knife into a computer numerically controlled milling machine?
(6) ... any software from the earliest operating system or simplest application into to all the software we have now?
Especially for software, we believe that lots of little modifications will lead to technical debt, need for refactoring, to throwing out and starting over with a clean sheet of paper, to "plan to throw one away because you will anyway". In software, often it seems that there is no reasonable way to get from here to there and, instead, have to start over.
Well, with DNA, on this planet apparently the first version of life able to reproduce at all significantly was based on DNA, and all versions of life since then, including us, have also been based on DNA. Moreover we got here by small modifications of the DNA.
So, maybe the point is, DNA is not really life but just a design for a life, not a species but just a design for one. And we do believe that easily enough we could go to an architect and building engineer with standard tools for generating blue prints and doing the engineering for buildings, and they could use the same tools for a log cabin or a floating city.
Okay, but for life there hasn't been any design means, hasn't been any alternatives, other than just DNA.
Moreover, the simplest design tools for life have also been sufficient for the life to understand the design tools, life, the earth, and the universe.
Moreover, we are about the first, one of the first graduating classes of life that understands DNA, life, ..., and the universe: It's been about 14 billion years since the big bang, and our solar system was made about 5 billion years ago from the results of exploding stars that grew and exploded in the first 9 billion years which is not much longer than it took for the first stars to form and explode. So, apparently to get life able to understand the universe had to take about 14 billion years from the big bang and we are among the first instances of such life.
YMMV, but looks amazing to me!
Hmm ....
Are you sure? I remember that life started as RNA not DNA.
That's not true, at least not if you start from the beginning.
There were a lot of "freak events", large scale mutations like whole genome duplication, integration of other organisms e.g. mitochondria, transposons etc...
There are other 'opcodes' such as the initiation factor, but codons are the main ones.