Life Itself (B): Why Are We Like Our Parents?

Abstract

Besides “being alive,” the characteristic of living organisms is to produce progenies. And the progenies are like their parents. A human being begets human beings; a frog begets tadpole(s), which eventually become frog(s). A single E. coli bacterium cell divides into two identical E. coli bacterial cells. Something must be transmitted from a parental organism(s) to its progeny to direct the progeny’s cells to become similar to its parent(s). This something is a “gene,” and the gene will govern the characters of the organisms. This is the central dogma of “Life on the Earth.” There are two things that a gene must do. One is that it should be able to duplicate itself or rather should be able to dictate its own duplication (replication). The second is that it must contain enough information to replicate the whole organism of which the gene is a part. Let us see how this is done in terms of chemistry.