I AM.

There's a miracle in the First Person.

Beyond Genes

Once, in the middle of a very heated conversation, I remember a friend retorting, ‘I am not just a DNA sequence. I refuse to be a decoded form of a string of codes, engraved even long before I was born’.
Had you watched Matrix Reloaded, you could’ve understood it’s the same feeling that the protagonist Neo feels when Morpheus talks about Reality and how human beings are grown by machines, and not born.

To that friend of mine, and to many more, who refuse to believe that the truth of who they are, can be predicted based purely on structural information of a DNA double-helix; modern molecular genetics may be a minor consolation.

Genetic information is stored as sequence of nucleotides of double-stranded DNA in a specialized organelle within the cell, called the nucleus. The information is first copied into something called the messenger RNA (mRNA) by a process called transcription. Upon synthesis, mRNA moves out into the cell cytoplasm where the codes stored as sequences in the DNA is finally decoded or converted into proteins by a process called translation. The protein molecules are the workhorses that carry out all the cellular functions and also decide, how we look, how we behave, etc.

Hence, the entire procedure of decoding will go through several steps, broadly, the first step of making mRNA from DNA (also known as ‘gene expression’) and the second step of translating the information in mRNA to proteins. Therefore, any modifications in the mRNA formed from the DNA, or amendments during the process of translation, will affect the structure or phenotype of the proteins that are eventually formed.

Transcripts that code for a particular protein appear in the form of RNA from the double-helix, only after extensive editing and slicing, all to the end that from the same DNA sequence, hundreds or even thousands of transcripts can be formed.

A novel mechanism for controlling gene expression is RNA interference or gene-silencing, the discovery of which by Andrew Fire and Craig Mello, earned them the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. In this mechanism, tiny double-stranded RNA molecules called ‘small interfering RNA’ degrade cellular mRNA that has sequence similarity with them. As a result, even though a gene has been expressed and mRNA has been made, proteins are not formed.

In fact, there are genes for which RNA, and not proteins, are the end products. Untranslated genes, forming non-coding RNA have massive roles in regulation of gene expression. Such RNA sequences, nothing to do with coding but to do with regulation, are the hot heroes in today’s molecular genetics.

Also, during the intermediary steps of decoding, for the net expression of a particular gene into protein, events and action may be asserted to ‘have to occur’, to ‘possibly occur’, to be ‘forbidden to occur’, to occur with some time constraints or under some probability, to be ‘the result or cause of some environmental event’, or to be the outcome of some mechanism.
Even while the initial conditions of the same gene in multiple systems remain the same, the final translated protein may be different depending on the intermediary events that take place during transcription and translation.

This is quite like how a number of balls, starting from the same initial point in a maze and made to follow different paths, will emerge out of it after different intervals of time. Even if the initial positions remain the same, the final displacement of the balls will vary depending on the paths chosen by the different balls.

Over the years, the concept of gene has indeed, outlived its usefulness. For, today, even though DNA remains the cell’s primary vehicle of inheritance, it is far from the only vehicle of inheritance. Cells have forever known, new ways of making use of the same DNA sequence and, a given DNA molecule can be used by cells to generate more novelty.

While the question of what decides the sequential events trailing to the activation, the repression of genes, the editing and alteration of RNA and proteins; perpetuates the eternal tussle between Providence and Coincidence; the good news is Nature has made it a point to ensure the dash of uniqueness, to even each of an identical twin, formed from the same zygote and the same DNA sequence.

There’s a TROUT to everyone.


I discovered my TROUT in a few yellowing albums at Choddu’s today all to the end for my fussy Ma, after all, to hold me back, at didarbari for Noboborsho of all the days in the year.

The place, as I’ve always felt since dida’s left, now barely reeks of the magic. The magic’s been quietly buried under asphalt with the magical muddy lanes and its weedy overgrowths. It’s so new and strange today; it has not a single trace of old days.

But then there’s a TROUT to everyone, as I was telling you, that flips flops its flippers and leaves behind trails of colors every time it wakes.

And this, I re-understood in the middle of yellowing albums, in the middle of a baseless conversation, in the middle of needless laughters, and in the same shabby room that once reeked of tetul and kacha aam.
So many things change. And so many things never do.

And, so will the story never end or the quill ever stop.
And while even the Neverland’s gone, neither shall Peter Pans die in nineteen or twenty-eight-year olds.

Too much of emptiness that has been around, suddenly found some magic. And there's the TROUT whistling...

A friend is back.