A Practitioner’s Understanding of DNA

DNA, A “Puppet” in the Scheme of Things

A North America Practitioner

Ever since the discovery of DNA in 1959, modern biology has seemingly developed rapidly. It’s believed by people that we’ve found the genetic material. DNA cloning technology seems to be able to provide anything people want. Since the cloning of a sheep in 1990, science has become more and more dominant in leading all of human society. People believe it’s appropriate to produce any species with DNA cloning technology, even humans. Mankind became indestructible. However, as more and more evidence has revealed the defects in cloning technology, a question must be considered: What on earth is DNA really? What’s it for?
The gene itself is not omnipotent. Some scientists consider it just a “puppet”. The expression of a certain gene is not coded within the information the gene carries, but is dependent on regulation from proteins in the surrounding environment. All molecular cell biologists know that the expression of a gene depends on epigenetic factors. That is to say, regulation of gene activity isn’t based on DNA sequence alteration, which can be inherited by later generations. If a gene is methylated, it will be turned off and no longer express its protein, this is called “gene silencing”. For example, tumor suppressor gene p16 is usually not methylated. But in tumor tissues, it is methylated and no longer expressed. But the mechanism that induces the methylation of this tumor suppressor gene is not known.

One of the biggest drawbacks of modern science is that it regards consequences as reasons. Many diseases are explained as consequences of a defect or mutation in a certain gene. But a different individual might not suffer the same disorder even with the same defect. Scientists justify their statement by saying that it’s a recessive mutation. Nobody knows how the mutation comes about, and science is also clueless on this issue. We know that diseases are caused by karma, which is manifested in this dimension as bacteria and viruses. Bacteria and viruses can cause changes to many aspects of an organism; gene mutation is only one of them. Then how could just correcting a gene cure a disease? These are all just phenomena, not the root. Modern science treats phenomena as reasons.

So what is real science? Real science should dig out the nature of an object; investigate the reasons behind the phenomena. It is to advance to a deeper level, a more microscopic level, rather than argue about the superficial phenomena.

Source: http://www.pureinsight.org/sci/sci/eng/newscontent.asp?ID=12066

Translated on October 2, 2001 from http://www.zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2001/9/28/11882.html