Biological Significance
Further information: Genetic code and Central dogma of molecular biologyIn biological systems, nucleic acids contain information which is used by a living cell to construct specific proteins. The sequence of nucleobases on a nucleic acid strand is translated by cell machinery into a sequence of amino acids making up a protein strand. Each group of three bases, called a codon, corresponds to a single amino acid, and there is a specific genetic code by which each possible combination of three bases corresponds to a specific amino acid.
The central dogma of molecular biology outlines the mechanism by which proteins are constructed using information contained in nucleic acids. DNA is transcribed into mRNA molecules, which travels to the ribosome where the mRNA is used as a template for the construction of the protein strand. Since nucleic acids can bind to molecules with complementary sequences, there is a distinction between "sense" sequences which code for proteins, and the complementary "antisense" sequence which is by itself nonfunctional, but can bind to the sense strand.
Read more about this topic: Nucleic Acid Sequence
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“No poetic phantasy
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like bird, insect, plant
or sea-plant cell;
I live; I am alive.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)