molecules within a cell read certain sections of the genetic code, like musicians in an orchestra reading their parts of a musical score—the cell’s individual song—thereby enabling a gene’s instructions to become physically manifest in the actual protein. Or, put more simply, a gene carries the code; a cell deciphers that code. A cell thus transforms information into form; genetic code into proteins. A gene without a cell is lifeless—an instruction manual stored inside an inert molecule, a musical score without a musician, a lonely library with no one to read the books within it. A cell brings
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