Interestingly the REACTIONS that are responsible for DNA and RNA and tRNA and mRNA etc. are all pretty straightforward, standard chemical reactions.
A lot of the "magic" of DNA is the transfer of base pairs. These base pairs are pairs in no small part due to the arrangement of an oxygen sticking off of them and a hydrogen that is on a neighboring N in the heterocycle.
This is the basics of transcription. A given set of base pair with complementary hydrogen bonding.
I'm not going to say that biochemistry is really simple, heaven knows that when I took biochem eons ago it had a lot of stuff to memorize but the basics are no too far off of how ice crystals form.
Ice crystals form the shape they do because the Oxygen prefers electrons more than the hydrogen in an H-O-H bond and so the bonds are polar and since the H2O is a "bent" configuration it has a slightly negative side and a slightly positive side and those H's are attracted to the O's....just like hydrogens on adenine are attracted to the oxygen on thymine in DNA!
But we DO understand DNA. To my understanding there is little that is mysterious about it.
Why is this bothersome to you? Every crystal of ice that forms in your refrigerator will form with the same crystallography. The same "INFORMATION" content is encoded into each one. Why is that? Because the atoms and the molecules obey strict physical laws.
DNA and biochemistry, being organic, may have much more complexity when viewing it from outside, but at their basic fundamentals they still follow very much the same chemical/physical rules. They function as they do because they can't do anything else.
When I can post pictures I will do so for you. But in the meantime perhaps you could tell us what the most baffling chemical reaction in DNA is that you can imagine.
A specific chemical reaction. Whatever is the most fascinating aspect for you, please tell us what the SPECIFIC chemical reaction that is at the core of it that is the most baffling to you to conceive of.
