Biological systems at the molecular level are impossibly advanced nanotech that we are hopelessly far from engineering ourselves from scratch.

DNA replication splits a double helix down the middle by the protein helicase. Since DNA only polymerizes in the 5' to 3' direction only one strand is made continuously. The other is made in loops. These are single-molecule robots copying 1000 base pairs per second.

Visualizations like this are terribly misleading though. In reality, things don’t run at a steady pace, and reactants don’t just magically glide to where they’re supposed to go. Things jitter around randomly, and only make progress in the right direction on average.

The jiggling will continue until thermodynamic selection processes improve

I have been a computer programmer for 45 years. I started studying cellular biology a few years ago. I can't see it any other way. This stuff is transcendental technology. No only is it more complex than we understand, I think it may be more complex than we *can* understand.

Humans = robots made of H2O, O2 and CO2 Humanoids = robots made of SiO2, C2H4N and LiCoO2. Both literally machines. We are not so different

And yet, here we are, walking bags of impossibly advanced nanotech, using our meat computers to ponder our own inadequacies. Nature's flexing on us hard.

For anyone who wants to have their mind blown on the origin of life - including a detailed explanation of how our cellular energy cycles are produced by quantum tunneling - you’ve got to read Vital Question. It’s magic - that we can understand!

AGI will solve this fairly easily. Within 10 years

They appear to be the most streamlined version of a solution for how to generate organic material that is even conceivably possible. The level of data compression in DNA must be insane compared to the mature organism that it produces. It's entirely possible it's literally the lowest possible storage requirement for the highest amount of uncompressed data you can achieve in nature. Stunning.

the most amazing thing about DNA is not the DNA itself but the collection of molecules that manage, maintain, copy and extract information from it.