Chemists could not imagine that the exact sequence of four types of nucleotides in a string-like molecule held the key. Geneticists underestimated the ability of macromolecules to store prodigious amounts of information. They failed to comprehend the amazing specificity of proteins shaped by the action of natural selection over several billion years. But this particular puzzle was eventually solved. We now know that life is an emergent phenomenon and can, ultimately, be reduced to chemistry and physics. No vitalistic force or energy separates the inorganic, dead world from the organic world of
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