”Every drop of human blood contains a history book written in the language of our genes”

National Geographic, U.S.A

Science writers often stampede the uninitiated human mind in attempts at explaining complex scientific situations. But is science as complex or does understanding it makes its explanation complex?

To answer this question, let us look into a classical case;DNA computers. I once ran into an article on it in a prominent magazine and managed to discern what the writer was saying after a prolonged study, but my friends weren’t as lucky. It was as if the writer did not really understand what he was saying but had stringed together technical explanations from different magazines.

What really are DNA computers? DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid, a double helix structure containing genes that can be very much appreciated by reading again the quote at the beginning of this article. Good, “a history book” but not an ordinary one. This history book is both for the past, present and the future. The DNA is found in the nucleus of our cells, on the surface of structures called chromosomes. These structures are all within our body, as we can see. And actually DNA carries the coded information or instruction for passing on hereditary characteristics. In another simpler diction “DNA is that thing containing another thing called genes that will make our pikin(child) resemble us”

What the above means is that if we successfully pass our DNA to our child and a situation arises in which our child is expected to exemplify us according to that in-built “History Book”, the History Book accepts the situation, opens its pages and searches for a correlation. It then processes the correlation to an expression relative to our child.

In the same breath, a computer accepts an input, compares it with its internal set up and determines what it is expected to do with it, it does this and then issues an output.

So if a computer can do mathematics why then cant our DNA do mathematics? The fact is our DNA can do mathematics if we can program the mathematical instruction in a language it can understand, the way they are programmed in a language the computer understands.

So DNA computers are computers whose central proceeding unit is the DNA

DNA computer are actually more complex than the above, but a complex odyssey into technicalities makes science columns in newspaper uninteresting. Science journals can afford the technicalities, but technicalities should not be the sole purpose also. We can spice it with simpler explanations by employing in more cases, the language of our common day-to-day life. Using such will make the reader think for himself in areas where we are at lost to explain in clearer terms.

Explaining science should also involve “focusing on science and its effect on prevailing situations”. Science does not necessarily mean space. It can be as simple as spice. No matter how much we may try to explain the principle behind spaceships to a spaghetti-eating man, the more better he will understand by telling him that if his spaghetti was to fly back to his spoon after slipping off, that it would need a magic, the better his mind would grasp it if we tell him to see his spa as a spaceship wishing to climb up to the ‘spoon of space’. We can then tell him that the same thing that pushes his spaghetti down will oppose a spaceship ready to fly. We can go on and on like that.

Time may not always allow a journey into such simplicity, but keeping the probability of such simplicity in mind, will help science writers make their art more interesting. At least, we can now explain DNA computers in our own simple language1