The Secret of Life

Any 4-year-old who likes ladybugs and lightning bolts can tell you that life is wildly beautiful as far as the eye can see. But it took the geniuses of our time to reveal how beautifully ordered life is deep down where we can't see it at all — in the molecular workshop where we become who we are. James Watson and Francis Crick did not discover the existence of DNA; they discovered its structure, which means they unveiled its power as well as its beauty. If you could uncoil a strip of DNA, it would reach 6 ft. in length, a code book written in words of four chemical letters: A, T, G and C. Fold it back up, and it shrinks to trillionths of an inch, small enough to fit in any one of our 100 trillion cells, carrying the recipe for how to make a human being from scratch. The ingredients are the same for everything that lives; we are cousins to sequoias, and slugs — one life, one creation.