Good DNA is an attribute we assign to people who are especially attractive, healthy, or old. At least we’ve been saying that since April 25, 1953, when James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin announced their discovery of the structure of the building blocks of all life, making today
INTERNATIONAL DNA DAY!
Deoxyribonucleic acid is the stuff that life is made of, the molecule that encodes the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms and many viruses.
The original digital 3-D printer, the instructions within our DNA tells our bodies to grow tall and lean, red-haired or brunette, short and round, brown or red. Those freckles across your nose, that unibrow or those knock knees? Encoded in our DNA, inescapable until we’re old enough for cosmetic surgery.
In other DNA news on this day, in 1973 the Human Genome Project announced it was just about done mapping the Human DNA Code, which still doesn’t explain why some of us are left-handed, hawk-nosed or Presbyterian.
It seems our individual Double Helix is a combo of Mom & Dad’s DNA codes, and theirs was a combo of their parents’ DNA, and theirs before them and so on, so the combinations and variations produce either a Shaqullle O’Neill or a Mickey Rooney, an Eleanor Roosevelt or a Jennifer Lawrence, so it’s a crapshoot.
We still don’t know why some genes dominate others and people resemble one parent more that the other, or why some people are highly intelligent while other people’s brains are a chromosome away from wood pulp. There’s still much to learn about what makes a being human, and maybe randomness is the key, so don’t be shocked when your child doesn’t have your eyes but shares the same bewildered grin.
•Suggested Activities: Combining, adapting, mutating.