Recent Articles
FALSE BELIEFS ON RACES RESULTS
RECONSTRUCTING THE HISTORY OF PEOPLE GROUP
How Did all Different Races Arise?
OBJECTION 1 on Creation in Genesis
WHAT'S GOD'S PURPOSE FOR YOUR LIFE?
IF I HAD MY LIFE ALL OVER AGAIN
WORKING WITH DIFFICULT PERSONALITIES
PRAYING and PREPARING for a MATE
Prayers for unsaved and Unbelievers
HEREDITY
This article was posted on Wednesday, September 17, 2008
HEREDITY
Each of us carries information in our body that describes us in the way a blueprint and specifications describes a finished building. It determines not only that we will be human beings, rather than cabbages or crocodiles, but also whether we will have blue eyes, short nose, long legs, etc. When sperm fertilizes an egg, all the information that specifies how the person will be built (ignoring such superimposed factors as exercise and diet) is already present. Most of this information is in coded form in our DNA. To illustrate coding, a piece of string with beads on it can carry a message in Morse Code:
The piece of string, by the use of simple sequence of short beads, long beads (to represent the dots and the dashes of Morse Code), and spaces can carry the same information as in the English word “help” typed on a sheet of paper. The entire Bible could be written thus in Morse code on a long enough piece of string.
In a similar way, the human blueprint is written in a code (or language convention) which is carried on very long chemical strings of DNA. This is by far the most efficient information storage system known, greatly surpassing any foreseeable computer technology. This information is copied and reshuffled from generation to generation as people reproduce.
The word “gene” refers to a small part of that information which has the instructions for only one type of enzymes, for example. Incredibly sometimes the same stretch of DNA can be “read” differently, to have more than one function, by starting the reading process from different points. The creative intelligence behind such a thing is mind-boggling. It may be simply understood as a portion of the “message string” containing only one specification.
For example, there is one gene that carries the instruction for making hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in your blood cells. If that gene has been damaged by mutation (such as copying mistakes during reproduction), the instruction will be faulty, so it will make a crippled form of hemoglobin, if any. (Disease such as sickle-cell anemia and thalassemia result from such mistakes.)
So, with an egg which has just been fertilized—— where does all its information, its genes, come from? One half comes from the father (carried in the sperm) and the other half comes from the mother (carried by the egg).
Genes come in pairs, so in the case of hemoglobin, for example, we have two sets of code (instruction) for hemoglobin manufacture, one coming from the mother and one coming from the father.
This is very useful arrangement, because if you inherit a damage gene from one parent that could instruct your cells to produce a defective hemoglobin, you are still likely to get a normal one from the other parent which will continue to give the right instructions. Thus only half of the hemoglobin in your body will be defective. (In fact, each of us carries genetic mistakes, inherited from one or the other of our parents which are usefully (covered up” by being matched with a normal gene from the other parent.)
(Heredity on skin color coming up)
(Answers In Genesis)
Next posting: SKIN COLOR (HEREDITY)
Previous posting: What is Race?
Leave your comments
