Participants:
Series Code: TCR
Program Code: TCR180010A
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00:30 Welcome to the Creator Revealed.
00:33 My name is Tim Standish, and I'm a scientist. 00:36 In fact, I spent about 20 years of my life 00:41 getting a PhD 00:44 that involved studying DNA. 00:49 This incredible molecule 00:52 that contains the plan 00:55 for much of what goes on in our bodies. 00:58 And it is so fascinating. 01:00 We're just so glad that you are joining us. 01:02 And if you're like me, 01:04 this is going to be something 01:05 that sometimes you look at and you go, "Whoa! 01:08 What did he just say?" 01:09 But what you'll see 01:11 is the Creator's design I believe, 01:14 that's what I see. 01:15 It's exciting to understand how God created us. 01:19 Exactly. 01:21 I think that DNA has been God's unique plan 01:25 for each person, 01:28 each organism out there that we see. 01:32 Because there are no two identical DNAs. 01:35 I mean, that's what makes us so unique. 01:38 This is what makes Shelley Quinn, 01:40 six foot tall, blue eyed person. 01:43 That's it. Yes. 01:44 Now we are more than just DNA. 01:48 But DNA is really important. 01:51 Before we dive into this, 01:52 I want us to consider these words 01:55 that were written by the Apostle Paul 01:57 to people living in a place called Colossae. 02:00 Okay, so he's writing to the Colossians 02:03 and he says, "For by Him" this is God, " 02:06 all things were created that are in heaven 02:10 and that are on earth, visible and invisible, 02:15 whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. 02:19 All things were created through Him and for Him." 02:23 Amen. 02:25 And when we talk about DNA, 02:27 we're really talking about something that is invisible. 02:32 It's so small, we can't see it. 02:35 We can't see it with our naked eyes, 02:37 we can't see it with a light microscope. 02:40 If you use super-duper specialize kinds of techniques, 02:45 you can visualize it however. 02:48 And that... 02:49 And there's DNA in every molecule of our body? 02:51 Oh, yes. Well, every cell of our body. 02:53 Every cell. Yeah. 02:54 DNA is a molecule 02:56 and it's found in every tiny little cell in our bodies, 03:01 and I want to start out by talking a little bit 03:05 about one of the gentlemen who received a Noble Prize 03:10 for figuring out the structure of DNA. 03:13 This is me back in the olden days. 03:17 Back when I had just earned my PhD, 03:22 and I'm standing with a gentleman 03:26 named Francis Crick. 03:29 Now, if you know anything about DNA, 03:31 you know that Francis Crick received a Nobel Prize 03:35 for figuring out the double helical structure of DNA 03:40 and we gonna get that in, to that in just a moment. 03:43 But I want to say something about Francis Crick, 03:46 because, you know, Francis Crick, 03:49 in my very limited personal experience, 03:52 was actually a very gentlemanly man, 03:54 a kind man. 03:55 And I remember talking with him, 03:59 and how kind he was to me. 04:02 You know, I was just a new PhD. 04:05 I didn't feel that I knew very much 04:07 actually at the end of that. 04:08 And here is this man with a Nobel Prize 04:12 and his kindness really impressed me. 04:15 So I want to be careful about what I say about him. 04:20 But I am going to quote something that he said 04:24 which really made quite an impression on me. 04:27 He wrote this. 04:28 He said, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind 04:32 that what they see was not designed, 04:36 but rather evolved." 04:39 You see, 04:42 Francis Crick was a materialist. 04:45 He believed that the only things 04:48 that exist are the atoms essentially. 04:52 And he was a brilliant man. 04:55 And he wrote, I believe, quite eloquently 04:58 about science and about DNA. 05:01 But at the end of the day, 05:04 he imposed on himself a philosophy 05:08 that was intention with 05:11 what he was observing in nature. 05:14 And so he had to make this rule for himself 05:18 and for those who believed in the same way. 05:21 I, as a Christian, 05:24 do not have to impose blinders like this on myself. 05:27 If something looks designed, 05:31 then I am free to interpret it as being designed. 05:34 Yes. 05:36 If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, 05:39 I'm allowed to say it's a duck. 05:41 Okay. 05:42 So that is a big difference 05:44 between the way that I think and the way that Francis Crick, 05:48 a man who I profoundly respect 05:51 but disagree with on this particular issue. 05:55 So this is the structure. 05:58 The double helix. 05:59 The double helix that Francis Crick figured out. 06:03 So DNA, this amazing molecule 06:07 that contains also to plans 06:10 for how our body is going to be. 06:12 This is what it looks like. It's like... 06:14 You can think of it as like two spirals staircases 06:17 that are spiraling around each other. 06:20 And the steps in there are things that we call bases. 06:25 So let's take a look at those. 06:27 I'm going to sort of untwist this molecule a little bit 06:30 so that we can see 06:32 what those A, Ts, and Gs, and Cs 06:35 look like in there 06:37 because those are the really important things, 06:40 that's where that information is coded. 06:43 And you can see those molecules there, 06:46 I'll put the As, and Ts, and Gs, and Cs on there. 06:49 Those are just letters of the alphabet 06:51 that we used to symbolize these specific chemicals 06:56 that you can see there. 06:57 The great thing about this structure... 07:00 Well, there are many, many, many things. 07:02 But you can encode information into that little alphabet, 07:07 that four letter alphabet all kinds of information. 07:10 There are about three billion of these A, Ts, Gs, and Cs 07:17 in the human genome. 07:19 That's amazing. 07:21 And if I was to take the DNA 07:22 that is inside one of your cells, 07:26 it would stretch out to approximately two meters long. 07:30 So it is longer than you are tall. 07:33 In just one cell? In just one microscopic cell. 07:37 That's amazing. 07:39 There, it's all packed up in there 07:40 and that contains a huge amount of information. 07:44 Okay, what do the P stand for? Protein? 07:47 Those stand for phosphates. Phosphates. 07:49 Okay. Okay. Yes. 07:51 So you can see that they're joined together by this. 07:53 It's a phosphate, and then a sugar, 07:55 and then a phosphate, and then a sugar, 07:57 and these bases, the A, Ts, Gs, and Cs 08:00 stick off the sugar path. 08:02 So the backbone is that sugar phosphate backbone that, 08:06 oh, I would love to spend 08:07 all the time talking about that, 08:09 but we better not. 08:10 Let's talk about these As, and Ts, and Gs, and Cs. 08:13 You can see that As and Ts 08:15 always match up with each other. 08:17 And Gs and Cs always match up with each other. 08:20 If we do, if we write out a whole bunch of them, 08:23 they would look something like this. 08:25 Now the great thing about this double helical structure 08:28 is that each side, 08:31 each strand contains 100% of the information 08:35 because of the rule that As always match up 08:38 with Ts and Gs always match up with Cs. 08:41 Okay. 08:42 Let's see how it works. All right. 08:43 If you pull the double helix apart, 08:46 the two strands apart, you can see, 08:49 you get something like this. 08:50 Well, in that top strand there, the light pink one, 08:55 the As are going to match up with what? 08:58 With the Ts. With the T, you're right. 09:00 So there is, 09:01 I can know what the other strand is going to be. 09:03 On the basis of this, it's going to start out with T. 09:05 All right, so you see some top to bottom, 09:06 A, T, A,T... 09:08 Precisely. T, A. 09:09 Okay. Okay. 09:11 So if you match things up, 09:13 you see that you get two identical strands 09:16 when this machinery of DNA replication 09:20 comes in and adds them in. 09:21 So how often is our body replicating this? 09:26 We're talking about millions of times a day, 09:28 billions of these 09:33 replication events occur in our body. 09:35 And you can see that because of the structure of DNA, 09:38 the way that you can unwind that double helix 09:42 and get two strands each 09:44 of which has a 100% of that information. 09:46 You can see why it is so incredibly accurate. 09:50 That is amazing. 09:52 It is unbelievably accurate what is going on there. 09:55 Now, the important thing about DNA is what? 10:00 It's obviously an amazing molecule, 10:02 but it contains a language, 10:05 information is encoded in there. 10:07 We're not even going to talk about that language, 10:09 but let's just say 10:10 this is the title of a scientific paper, 10:14 "The Genetic Code is One in a Million." 10:17 It is just a fantastic language and will leave it at that. 10:21 Okay. Okay. 10:23 Let's look at what a gene looks like. 10:28 Now, genes are what are encoded in DNA. 10:32 They are like the recipe for making the proteins 10:37 that are found inside our bodies 10:39 and in every other living thing. 10:43 I want to point out something interesting about genes. 10:46 All right. 10:48 Genes are made up of segments. 10:50 They're called exons. 10:52 So you can see I've numbered the segments of this PITX2 gene 10:58 as exons one through six. 11:01 The cool thing about each of these exons, 11:03 each of these segments is you can mix and match them. 11:07 So if you put them together, 11:10 if you use exons one, two, five, and six, 11:13 you'd make a protein called PITX2 Isoform a. 11:18 Don't worry about the language there. 11:19 Yes, okay. 11:21 Just understand that that's one kind of protein. 11:24 Now this gene can make another kind of protein 11:27 by taking different segments. 11:29 If it takes, one, two, three, five, and six, 11:31 it makes what's called Isoform b. 11:35 It's a related protein but it's different. 11:39 So how is that working in our body? 11:41 What this means is... 11:43 You can keep on doing this, 11:45 you can make a Isoform c as well. 11:46 Okay. 11:47 The point is, one protein can make many different... 11:53 Sorry, one gene can make many different proteins. 11:56 That's why we have little over 20,000 genes. 12:00 But we have a whole lot of proteins, 12:04 a lot more, a hundreds or thousands of proteins, 12:07 different proteins in our bodies. 12:08 And I remember from one of your presentations 12:09 "The proteins are the drive chefs." 12:12 Well, that's one protein in one of the molecular machines. 12:16 Those molecular machines are all made up of 12:18 many different proteins 12:20 that all have to work together... 12:22 That's amazing. In very precise way. 12:25 So yes, 12:27 what we see is that, 12:28 the genes are actually information processing systems. 12:31 They have to decide which protein to make. 12:34 We could go on and on and on forever. 12:36 And this is happening now thereon. 12:37 There's so much more that we could talk about, 12:39 but there is just a couple of things 12:42 that I want us to get out of this information. 12:45 The Creator is revealed in these molecules of life, 12:48 the DNA. 12:49 His wisdom is shown in His choice of materials like DNA, 12:54 with its stability, high coding efficiency 12:56 and associated mechanism of copying. 12:59 And His wisdom appears clearly in the information 13:02 that actually encoded in the DNA. 13:06 That is so amazing 13:08 and I know everybody's head is swimming 13:10 but please stay tuned. 13:11 We're going to be back in just one minute. 13:13 And we will be talking with a nano chemist, 13:16 who can tell us more. |
Revised 2019-04-15