98

I know that DNA encodes proteins. Truthfully, everything besides that (including 'what are proteins') mostly wooshes over my head, but that's not relevant because whenever I search this question I never even find it addressed anywhere.

The human body has, among other things, two hands each with five fingers, with a very particular bone structure. How are things like that encoded in DNA, and by what mechanisms does that DNA cause these features to be built the way they are? What makes two people have a different nose shape? Nearly everyone in my family has a mole on the left side of their face, how does that come about from DNA?

I'm sure there are many steps involved, but I don't see how we go from creating proteins to reproducibly building a full organism with all the organs in the right places and the right shapes. Whenever I try to look this up, all of these intermediate steps are missing, so it basically seems like magic.

As I said, any explanation will most likely go over my head and I won't be able to understand it fully, but I at least want to see an explanation. I'll do my best to understand it of course.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] goddard_guryon@sopuli.xyz 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Like you said, there's a metric ton of steps involved in the overall process, and our understanding of each of these 'levels' of organization varies quite a bit. Closest to my personal expertise is the sub-cellular and cellular level, for which I would refer you books or papers in developmental biology, developmental genetics, and epigenetics. I can give you a couple bloopers to get you excited though:

When it comes to deciding where different organs will form (again, from a sub-cellular level), it essentially starts from a concentration gradient of certain proteins/chemicals inside the zygotic cell. This gradient then determines the level of activation of other proteins, each level then leading to different biochemical cascades which, once more cells have formed from the zygote, determine which organ systems will come from them. Messing around with this concentration gradient can, thus, dramatically affect an organism's development, leading to, for example, a body with just 'left' organs on both halves, just 'top' organs on both halves, missing an entire organ system (like circulatory system and heart) and so on.

A more or less similar process occurs to determine the shape of organs. As a simple example, when some animals with regenerative capabilities (like axolotls) lose a limb, they are able to regrow the limb to the exact same length as before. Turns out, each cell on the periphery of their limb has a certain concentration of receptor proteins on its surface, which acts as a molecular 'signature' of that cell's position in the limb. These signatures provide information on how far to grow the limb for regeneration, and some chemicals, lile retinol, can even override these signatures and fool the organism's body into regrowing the limb from scratch on top of the place of regeneration.

I hope these examples give you an introduction to the mechanisms involved. There's obviously a lot more involved, so I would again highly recommend textbooks and research papers if you're interested.

this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
98 points (96.2% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35764 readers
1001 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS