Friday, 24 March 2023

Am I Printed ?

A common thought I had in recent days is pondering if my whole existence comes down to being printed. It is spring now, when I think of spring, I think DNA because it has a helix shape like metal springs. 
There are 46 DNA strands in each of my cells in my body, they're so long that they're folded up with special proteins and stored as chromosomes when the cell divides. DNA is designed to be pulled in half down the middle so a protein machine can read one side of it. The other side is a negative copy of the reading side and is used to copy the DNA itself. I realized a protein machine rides across the DNA like a zip and pulls it in half, reads one side of it then pushes them back together again. 
The protein machine pulls the strand in half and reads 3 markers at a time, then another part of the protein machine spits out RNA strands like a printer. The instructions to make the RNA come from the DNA. The RNA strands control another group of protein machines that use the commands to make more proteins out of amio acids, they grab the amio acid molecules listed in the RNA and join them together until the long strands of amio acids fold themselves into proteins; all the cell's proteins are made this way, even the protein machines that read and copy the DNA molecule. I'm left with more and more questions. 

Am I Printed? If all parts of me come from DNA molecules, am I just gene sequences that are printed out by protein machines? 

Why do we have 46 chromosomes? Why not 50 or 10? 

Do all the Chromosomes contain protein gene sequences or are some of them used other things like controlling the behaviour of cells? 

There are so many things I don't know. 

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