Genes are biochemical recipes written in a four-letter alphabet called DNA.

Synthetic biology56 is built around the idea that DNA is essentially software — nothing more than a four-letter code arranged in a specific order. Much like with computers, the code drives the machine. In biology, the order of the code governs the cell’s manufacturing processes, instructing it to make specific proteins and such. But, as with all software, DNA can be reprogrammed. Nature’s original code can be swapped out for new, human-written code. We can co-opt the machinery of life, telling it to produce — well, whatever we can think of.

During replication, those nucleotides are read and translated into linear strings of amino acids (which make up enzymes and proteins) by a rule-governed process. The set of rules is called the genetic code. The DNA contains the sequence, but the code is implemented by RNA molecules. Certain DNA sequences, called codons, which are made up of three nucleotides, symbolize certain amino acid sequences. There is no ambiguity, but there is also not just one codon for each amino acid. For example, six different codons symbolize arginine, but only one codon symbolizes tryptophan. But the components of the DNA sequence (the symbol) do not resemble the components of the amino acid sequence (its meaning), just as the words that symbolize the components of a recipe do not resemble the components themselves.

we don’t have a twenty-letter alphabet, we have a twenty-six-letter alphabet.” And then I say, “Oh, I guess I left out U R A Q T!” And then you say, “That’s still only twenty-five.” And I say, “I’ll give you the D later.

Imagine that the genome is a book.

There are twenty-three chapters, called CHROMOSOMES.
Each chapter contains several thousand stories, called GENES.
Each story is made up of paragraphs, called EXTONS, which are interrupted by advertisements called INTRONS.
Each paragraph is made up of words, called CODONS.
Each word is written in letters called BASES.

I haven't learned
How or why
Universe contrived to implode
And intellectually code
The myriadly unique
Chromosomically orchestrated
DNA-RNA,
Quadripartite moleculed,
Binary paired,
Helically extended
And unzippingly dichotomied
Regenerative symphonic
jazz, as
A one and two,
Three and four
Me — -You,
Thee — -They
And more
Thine and mine,
Sweet citizen,
THYMINE-CYTOSINE
GUANINE-ADENINE

Some molecules were stable. . . . These became letters in a new alphabet.
They, too, reacted to form still larger clusters, a few of which survived and accrued. . . . the first genetic words.

Science has discovered that, like any work of literature, the human genome is a text in need of commentary, for what Eliot said of poetry is also true of DNA: 'all meanings depend on the key of interpretation.' What makes us human, and what makes each of us his or her own human, is not simply the genes that we have buried into our base pairs, but how our cells, in dialogue with our environment, feed back to our DNA, changing the way we read ourselves. Life is a dialectic.

My alphabet starts with this letter called yuzz. It s the letter I use to spell yuzz a ma tuzz. You ll be sort of surprised what there is to be found once you go beyond Z and start poking around

DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.

The alphabet (and its extension into typography) made possible the spread of the power that is knowledge, and shattered the bonds of tribal man, thus exploding him into an agglomeration of individuals. Electric writing and speed pour upon him, instantaneously and continuously, the concerns of all other men. He becomes tribal once more. The human family becomes one tribe again.

In our every cell, furled at the nucleus, there is a ribbon two yards long and just ten atoms wide. Over a hundred million miles of DNA in very human individual, enough to wrap five million times around our world and make the Midgard serpent blush for shame, make even the Ourobouros worm swallow hard in disbelief. This snake-god, nucleotide, twice twisted, scaled in adenine and cytosine, in thymine and in guanine, is a one-man show, will be the actors, props and setting, be the apple and the garden both. The player bides his time, awaits his entrance to a drum-roll of igniting binaries. This is the only dance in town, this anaconda tango, this slow spiral up through time from witless dirt to paramecium, from blind mechanic organism to awareness. There, below the birthing stars, Life sways and improvises. Every poignant gesture drips with slapstick; pathos; an unbearably affecting bravery. To dare this stage, this huge and overwhelming venue. Squinting through the stellar footlights, hoping there's an audience, that there's someone out there, but dancing anyway. But dancing anyway.

The strands of DNA are like strings, and it’s as if I am a walking guitar, a musical being whose vibration can be heard as love.

The most powerful four-letter word is home.