. It also explainsook scientists so long to  ance so mystifyingly lo t of life itself.

    As a knoity, DNA  t   tyof tübingen in Germany. ance  recognize and called it nuclein (because itresided in t time, Miesctle more te its existence, butnuclein clearly remained on y-ter in a letter to y t sucs bey. traordinary insig one so far in advance of tific requirements t itattracted no attention at all.

    For most of t ury tion  terial—no a subsidiary role in matters of y. Itoo simple. It  four basic components, called nucleotides,  four letters. e tory of life ary alp? (t you do it in muc you create complexmessages s and dasdo anyt all, as far as anyone could tell. It just sat ty on command or fulfilling someotrivial task t no one  t of. ty, it ,o exist in proteins in the nucleus.

    t, t:

    teemed it in some important op of t kept turning up, like t in a murder mystery, in experiments. In tudies in particular, one involving terium and anoteriop infect bacteria), DNA betrayed an importance t could only beexplained if its role ral t alloed t DNA al to life,yet it  proteins side t ing their assembly.

    No one could understand ting messages to teins. ts as an interpreter bet is a notable oddity of biology t DNA and proteins don’t speak t four billion years t double act, andyet to mutually incompatible codes, as if one spoke Spanisher hindi.

    to communicate tor in translates information from a cell’s DNA into terms proteinscan understand and act upon.