Not a Blueprint But a Recipe

We might never understand life's complexity were it not for the discovery that life is orchestrated by "intelligent" worker molecules called proteins. These proteins are various combinations of twenty, and only twenty, different amino acids linked together into long chains. Every unique function of a protein is determined by the order of the amino acids in its chain.

Here we have a powerful insight into the way life works: One chain, DNA, carries information; a second chain, of amino acids linked into proteins, does life's work of growing, maintaining itself and reproducing. DNA's sequence of units determines the sequence of amino acid units in proteins. Thus, DNA is not like a blueprint, which contains an image or a scale model of the final product; it is more like a recipe - a set of instructions to be followed in a particular order.

So life's complexity arises from a breathtaking simplicity: DNA's message says, "Take this, add this, then add this...stop here. Take this, add this, then add this, ... etc." While the idea is simple, accomplishing it requires some ingenious machinery.