The Book Written in Every Cell

There is a book inside you, and it is written in almost every one of your cells.

We call it DNA. It is a long molecule twisted into a spiral staircase, and along it runs a sequence of chemical "letters." That sequence is not a shape or a pattern — it is *information*. It is read, in order, and it means something. It tells the cell which proteins to build, and in what order, and when.

The amount is staggering. If you took the DNA out of a single one of your cells and stretched it out straight, it would be about six feet long — folded down into something far too small to see. Take all the DNA in your whole body, end to end, and it would reach to the sun and back many times over. And the information in one cell, written out as letters, would fill a shelf of thick books.

Here is what makes it a code and not just a chemical: the letters could be arranged in any order at all — the chemistry does not care. What makes one arrangement build a working eye and another build nothing is not chemistry. It is the *message*.

David said God had a book with all his members written in it. It turns out every cell in his body was carrying a copy.