Move over, DNA

If DNA were a narcissistic jealous celebrity, it would be suicidal by now. This is because more and more, the spotlight in science seems to uncover certain scenarios involving what makes for life and it does not anymore seem to be solely defined by DNA. Alas, the writers of the CSI episodes may have no choice but to include a new “actor” in crime-solving. They do not even have to include it in the roll of credits because the new actor is a molecule.

For the longest time since the discovery of the double helical structure of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953, the most basic building blocks of all living things and eventually, CSI plots, have always been thought to be DNA. In this, DNA has never shared the stage with any other molecule. Like full-blown celebrities, it has been in the cover of every science publication — being thanked or blamed for every talent or disease living things have. This is particularly dramatic when it comes to human DNA or to non-human DNA that has implications to cure human diseases. So that if life were music, DNA was thought of as the four-instrument quartet playing the basic melody.

But piling records of scientists who have made it their professional habit to scour the little life chambers all living things called “cells,” found that there is another quartet at work.

Think of biological life as a series of concerts. Proteins — thousands of them — are the ones responsible for how the organs perform and how you behave. Proteins are the various repertoires that your DNA quartet plays so that your biological concert tour can play throughout your life. But for these repertoires, something else that was previously thought to be just a “middleman” between DNA and proteins is now seen to be perhaps, a star performer on its own.

“Born” Ribonucleic Acid, it has long gone by the nickname RNA. Sorry, not Quantum of Solace (what does that mean anyway?). Scientists have this annoying habit of naming something and describing it at the same time. My vote counts for nothing but I wish they just called it “Roxanne” — a lady’s name because it is so good at multi-tasking.

For lay people, looking at it through a microscope, RNA may look and feel like the famous DNA. Well, sort of except for a few kinks. For one, RNA only has one strand while DNA has two (that is why it is called the double helix). Like DNA, RNA is also made up of four “bases.” Think the Beatles, except that in place of one of the Beatles, RNA has some other “base” — uracil in place of DNA’s “thymine” — like maybe Elton John in place of George Harrison. This slightly different version of the Beatles seems to be doing the equivalent of making a world tour in living bodies, doing all sorts of things in relation to proteins. It was sometimes observed as booking agent, sometimes as manager, sometimes production assistant, sometimes even songwriter or even song silencer or album releaser. With all these roles, RNA may just turn out to have a fundamental sway in the music of being alive — what you play, what you don’t, what you play long and short, what you soften and make louder. Think of all these in terms of a disease, an ability or even a behavioral tendency.

Now, a deluge of science articles around the world is featuring all these roles that RNA seem to be playing. Some say, indeed, it is a star in its own right in the music of cellular life; some say they still cannot say the scope of its work, the sweep of its task to decode cellular music. But all seem to agree that the curtains to the stage that was defined solely by the DNA quartet, is being slowly drawn to reveal a richer harmony from other instruments.

I find it easier to accept this new star, RNA, when I think of the lives of my cells as music. Have you ever heard the Madrigal Singers sing the Circle of Life? Listening to it on my car CD player always gives me a sense of instant Africa even if I am sitting in traffic on C5 surrounded by billboards announcing that the real meaning of life is found in shampoo. The Circle of Life is a powerful rendition of a multiplicity of sounds harmonizing to give you the sound of one. That is how real and immutable the sense of life is as music — grand, complex, irreducible to one single performer or instrument.

Lewis Thomas (1913-1993) is a physician and writer whom I always “run” to when the jargon of biology and medicine begins to strangle me mute. Being a doctor and researcher, he has observed for himself how a slight change in DNA can spell the defining differences among living things. He wrote: “The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.” Having been born, being lavished with love and music as well as deep encounters with laughter, books and chocolate, I cannot express to you the deep resistance I would have, to go back to a time when all life was bacteria. So in the light of a new player in the music of biological life, I join Dr. Thomas in marveling over DNA and if most hunches turn out to be true, I am sure he would also be awed to know that that “special attribute” may just be a foxy multi-tasking molecule called Roxanne.

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