DNA and Consciousness: The Brains Behind Biology

The Complexity of Life 

When you compare all life forms on Earth, the information storage capacity of DNA becomes clear; every single form of life on this planet uses the same code as its program. This indicates that evolution of all life began after one replicator was formed. The differences in life forms are simply a change in the information code.This ensures the replicators can survive in viable bodies in many diverse environments.

However, looking at life from this perspective creates some unique examples of organisms. Take bees, for example. Did you know that worker bees are unable to reproduce? In fact, these bees are known to suicide bomb predators with their stingers. This doesn’t make sense; if genes make organisms to survive and pass down information, why do these bees appear to do the opposite? The answer is quite interesting.

Natural Selection of Bee-havior

The trick is to broaden the definition of an organism. While we are used to defining one organism as confined to the matter within an envelope (skin), this is not always the case. In fact, it appears that beehives function as independent organisms. The worker bees act as immune cells as well as energy harvesting cells while the queen and drones act as the reproductive system. The bees behave in certain ways to regulate hive temperatures and the famous navigation dance they perform serves as a “brain” that stores memories.

Now, the curious case of colony insects makes sense; many individuals are genetically programmed to serve one function in the “collective organism”. In fact, some colony insects take advantage of this programming by stealing other colonies’ larvae and raising them in their own colony. When the larvae are born, they begin doing what they are programmed to do, only for the enslaving colony. This saves the queen resources that she can use in producing different types of insects such as other queens to spread her empire.

DNA and Disease

Studying genes also allows us to understand infectious diseases and why some organisms live in harmony while others fight each other to death. From a genetic perspective, it is reasonable to wonder why some diseases cause us to get sick while other bacteria seem to boost our health. The key to distinguishing these types of relationships is by observing the end goal of the parasitic organism. In other words, how do they intend to ensure their DNA will reproduce and spread?

Parasitism and Sickness

When the parasitic organism uses a different exit point than the host organism, there is often a conflict of interest between the two. Take viruses for example; viruses use the host to replicate their genetic information, after which they seek to leave via sneezing or coughing. To them, the well being of the host is irrelevant and they will exploit it in order to maximize virus survival. The virus will trigger a coughing reflex in order to continue the spread of its genes. Any commonplace disease follows this pattern.

Mutualism in our Gut

In contrast, when a parasite seeks to continue its genetic journey through the offspring of the host, the game is entirely different. In this case, the parasite will do well only if the host does well. As a result, these parasites tend to be beneficial. One good example of this relationship is our digestive bacteria.

Bacteria essential for breaking down food fill our digestive tract. These species rely on  the offspring of humans to survive from generation to generation. As a result, digestive bacteria have evolved to be indispensable to humans. In fact, they have become so useful that they are essential to our survival; we simply can’t digest food without at least some digestive bacteria. These evolutionary relationships allow the bacterial genes to increase their likelihood of survival.

As expected in such a mutualistic relationship, the digestive bacteria do indeed seek to prolong their survival through host offspring. There is research that indicates that digestive bacteria may be transferred to fetuses in the womb. In addition to this, the birth canal also exposes the baby to bacteria that eventually populate it’s digestive tract. There are theories that between the birthing process, breast milk, and human interaction, babies are exposed to the majority of essential digestive bacteria.

These bacteria will restart the cycle of survival as the baby matures into an adult capable of reproduction. There are many examples of such relationships but the most profound one will be covered under the theory of endosymbiosis.

These examples are a few of the phenomena that arise on Earth as a result of an information language shared by all organisms. However, the most interesting thing that has risen as a result of the evolution of this language is something that has not been fully understood yet: consciousness.