We Call DNA a Language. Is It?

Fifty years before we solved it, long before its information began filling scientific headlines and pharmaceutical shelves, and even before we understood the basic fact that DNA is a double helix, the human genome was being framed as a type of language. In 1952, the physicist Edwin Schrödinger turned an eye towards biology. He was already famous for his work in quantum mechanics, including postulating his famous eponymous cat, which sat alone in a box, both alive and dead, until you looked inside the box to see if it was one or the other. He was influential in biology as well, postulating that there must be a code script contained in DNA bases connected by covalent bonds that was capable of transmitting heredity information. 

From the very beginning of our nearly 75-year love affair with this gooey substance, DNA was discussed as a language. And if DNA was the language, then the genome was the book—not just a container, but a manual. DNA began to be called the language of life, and many thought if we could read it...