First, seeing the code makes the concept of cellular software explicit. Given a segment of DNA, we can read off the instructions which direct the cell’s inner workings, a sophisticated coordination wholly absent in inanimate matter. Second, seeing the code demonstrates what biologists mean when they call it universal. Every molecule of DNA, whether from seaweed or Sophocles, encodes the information needed to build proteins in the same way. That is the unity of life’s information.
