The Greatest Mystery of Life

The adjective "greatest" is the most subjective word for sure. Commonly, the greatest mystery of life is thought to be about spiritual believes, also may recall occultism a little bit. However, in my opinion, the greatest mystery of life is in the life itself, main subject of biology. Guess what? DNA? No? Just because it is known for so long time?

I really don't understand how may people think that the knowledge of DNA and heredity explains the formation of  species. Do not be so quick to judge me. Just think about it. Think about a single cell of which all other cells of  a single body get divided. All of the cells carries the exact same code, which guides them to produce proteins and transforms into what? Innumerable types of specialized cells; neurons, blood cells, muscle cells etc.(1) All these specialized cells come along to form tissues. Think about the brain. It has very specialized parts to handle specific tasks very efficiently. These parts are the advanced computational circuits. Think about it. All the cells are copied from a single cell. How these copy cells decide which type of cell they will be and how they imagine which part of the whole they will be and connected to other parts precisely.(2)

The mystery is not about complexity, it is about the diversity emerges from singularity. How singular cells decide which way to evolve, how they have a perception of the 3D shape of the tissues, complex circuits, how can symmetrical shapes can be formed without external perception. Even when the shape of a tissue get damaged or a part of the brain gets paralyzed, the cells in the tissue covers the damage and handle the wound successfully. Neurons even can tolerate damages by forming new connections. Even the system works inside very very dynamic environment, almost without any solid reference points.

Imagine that you will write a program which will be enveloped inside a pocket, say cell, the program will have all the necessary codes to run required mechanism inside it, from morphing to producing. That pocket will duplicate itself, and a complex system will be emerged from the duplicated pockets with the same program inside them. What kind of program would it be? This is the greatest mystery of life I believe.


1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distinct_cell_types_in_the_adult_human_body

2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba-HMvDn_vU&t=3324s


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