Hacker News Reader

Youtube is fantastic for this. What you'll find out is that once you understand how DNA works (codons map to amino acids), and that amino acids fold into specific 4D shapes that trap molecule A and mush it into molecule B to make molecule C, the rest kind of falls into place.

View on HN

4D shapes as in changing over time?

Yes, exactly. It's really quite fascinating--everything just vibrates, like a lot, all the time. The vibrations of some bits have frequencies that resonate with the frequency of other bits. And when they sync up, they change their frequency and then no longer resonate with each other. The whole universe is basically a giant musical instrument and chemical reactions are just wavelettes resonating with other things.

Haha, as a Biochemistry PhD student, this is almost exactly how I will often break down biology to a layperson: DNA corresponds to proteins that are essentially just shapes bumping into other shapes, sometimes making new shapes and sometimes destroying them in the process.

Of course, provided 4 billion years of evolution, this has yielded staggering complexities, but at the heart of it is just globs.

"Given enough time, Hydrogen starts to wonder where it came from, and where its going."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com