Building a Better DNA Analogy (for the purpose of explaining its origins)

[ImaginalDisc]

DNA is like a recipe for baking a factory that builds more factories that is self-correcting but not perfect which allows for small errors to be incorporated over time but because the recipe is written in a very simple language of nothing but three letter words it's very long and reads like all of London's telegraphs for the year 1897 and most of it doesn't mean anything like people's signatures and bizarre and meaningless scrawl in your high school year book and the size of the recipe doesn't tell you diddly about how complex the factory is going to be I mean why the Hell is the fountainhead so long but Tom Sawyer so short it's because good things come in small packages this message is brought to you by Penguin Publications.

OK, maybe that's a bad idea. DNA is so unlike anything else that while there are things a lot like some of DNA's specific functions, as a whole, it's quite unique.

 

[Wowbagger]

It is also impossible. The speck of dirt can't fall from the middle. A snowflake is a three dimensional structure, a bit like a fluffy ball. Assuming the speck in the middle can't escape through a fourth dimension, it isn't going anywhere.

It is not impossible. There are snowflakes with a hole in the center. It might be rare, especially in the wild, but the middle could break off of the rest, without violating any physics, and without the need to escape into another dimension.

I did not mean to imply that the dirt speck magically disappears from the center, without taking any of the water molecules with it.

Have you ever even seen a snowflake under a microscope? I have, and let me tell you; it isn't the wonderfully structured complex crystal you seem to think it is. It is a hideously jumbled mess.

That jumbled mess is what I referred to as "lopsided". I think I do like the words "jumbled mess" better, though. It does seem as though these messy flakes are a lot more common than the nearly symmetrical ones. And, that actually makes the analogy stronger. Early DNA predecessors could have been just as messy and/or organized as most natural snowflakes.

DNA is so unlike anything else that while there are things a lot like some of DNA's specific functions, as a whole, it's quite unique.

And, that is why no analogy is perfect. But, they can still be of limited use in communicating certain ideas. As long as we do not take them too far or too seriously.