If DNA is the book of life, what language is it written in? and how is it read? If every cell of our body has DNA, how are different cells created?

We’ve already discussed how DNA is made up of many many nucleotides stringed together, and how two strands compliment each other. That’s what DNA is made of, and how it looks. The instructions come from the specific sequence of repeating nucleotides.

You can think of it like a book. A book contains information because of the sequence of letters and punctuation follows rules of spelling and grammar. If you know the rules for that language, you can read that book. Of course, a book can be understood differently by each reader. The book itself doesn’t change, but how it is understood does.

It’s the same for DNA, the specific sequence of the four nucleotides, called A, G, C and T are like words and sentences. DNA is as complex and intricate as any good read. It has information rich areas, where lots of genes are located, and other regions that serve more to hold the story together than anything else. The reader, in this case, is the cell in which the DNA lives. There are over 200 cell types in our bodies, and many which only exist temporarily as we grow. Each cell reads DNA in it’s own particular way. We would say that in each cell type, certain genes are active vs inactive, compared to another cell type, and that’s what makes they different.

So DNA really is like a book: The language is universal and can have many meanings.