Betül Kaçar

But the point is that you will still end up with the same amino acids or something similar to it, even if you mess up the code.

Which errors result in the same output, like the same function and which don't, which actually results in a dysfunction or which are... We understand to some degree how translation and the rest of the cell work together, how an error at the translation level, this is the really core level, can impact entire cell.

But we understand very little about the evolutionary mechanisms behind the selection of the system.

It's thought to be one of the hardest problems in biology, and it is still the dark side of biology, even though it is so essential.

So this is, yeah, you're looking at the...

language of life, so to speak, and how it can found ways rather to tolerate its own mistakes.

Because all the final letters, that's the 20 amino acids, that's our alphabet.

They are all brought together with these bits of information, right?

So when you look at the genes, you're looking at those four letters.

When you look at the proteins, you're looking at the 20 amino acids, which may be a little easier way to track the information when we create the tree.

It's one perspective.

We are not that good at it yet, right?

If you're a biologist and you want to understand how life evolved from a molecular perspective, this would be the way to do it.

And this is what nature narrowed its code down to.

So when we think of nitrogen, when we think of carbon, when we think of sulfur, it's all in this, that all these nucleotides are built based on those elements.

Exactly.

That's the informatic perspective.

And it's important to emphasize that this is not engineered by humans.

This evolved by itself.

It appears to be a highly optimized chemical and information code.