Part B of Climbing Elven Stairways: DNA as a macroscopic metaphor of polarized psychodynamics. For access convenience this paper has also been split into two parts.

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For access convenience this paper has been split into two parts. The unsplit version is also available

The earlier exploration (Theories of Correspondences -- and potential equivalences between them in correlative thinking, 2007) did not immediately highlight the nature of different correspondences. It is therefore appropriate to explore the extremely well-researched nature of the base pairs to which it is suggested here that the correspondences may be in some way analogous. The exploration is guided by the recognition that, whether in terms of microbiological processes or with respect to psychodynamic relationships, both are essential to life as it is experienced -- and that therefore, as argued above, some degree of similarity is to be tentatively hypothesized between them.

As noted in the helpful Wikipedia entry, in molecular biology a base pair is the connection via hydrogen bonds of two nucleotides on the opposite/complementary helical DNA (or RNA) strands. The base pairs are of two kinds in DNA, through which four nucleotides are connected as indicated in Table 1 (with the letters that conventionally denote them).

As a template, the two types of viable base pairing will be related below to the systematic metaphorical representation of psychodynamics developed by the I Ching coding system. The "steps" on the spiral stairway are the two-fold or three-fold bonds which in that system would be equivalent to the yin and yang line coding.

The number of base pairs is therefore equal to the number of nucleotides on a single strand. The human genome is estimated to be about 3 billion base pairs in length and to contain 20,000-25,000 distinct genes. Distinctiveness, and information carrying capacity, arise from the sequencing of the four different nucleotides along one strand (complemented by the sequencing of the corresponding nucleotides on the other). A gene may then be described as a union of genomic sequences of nucleotides encoding a coherent set of potentially overlapping functional products.

The genetic code is the set of rules by which information encoded in genetic material (DNA or RNA sequences) is translated into proteins (amino acid sequences) by living cells. Specifically, the code defines a mapping between tri-nucleotide sequences (called codons) and amino acids; every such triplet of nucleotides in a nucleic acid sequence then corresponds to a single amino acid as indicated in Table 3.

The above table may be represented in inverse form in Table 4. It is useful to recognize that each codon triplet in Table 3 or 4 is the representation on one strand of the ends of three base pairs. Implied by the nucleotides UAC, for example, is the existence of the corresponding nucleotides AUG with which they are bonded on the other strand -- thereby constituting three base pairs.

This representation corresponds in a number of respects to that of the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, as has been noted by several authors (Katya Walter, Tao of Chaos: merging East and West, 1996; Johnson F. Yan, DNA and the I Ching: the Tao of life, 1993; Martin Schonberger, The I Ching & the Genetic Code: the hidden key to life, 1979). Katya Walter has shown that the Fu Xi Earlier Heaven Ho Tu arrangement of the 64 hexagrams can represent the DNA genetic code:

Table 5: Relationship between I Ching hexagrams and amino acids [Source: Katya Walter, Tao of Chaos: merging East and West, 1996]

The relationship of the codon triplets to the conventional hexagrams of the I Ching may be made in Table 6 by recognizing the implied corresponding half of the three base pairs represented in Table 4, and the 2 and 3-fold hydrogen bonding that distinguishes them. A single codon triplet (of three base pairs) in Table 4 is then equivalent as a code to a single I Ching hexagram. Note that conventionally the yin and yang elements are associated with the even and odd numbers, 2 and 3 -- matched here with the 2 and 3-fold base pair bonding.

Table 6: Possible equivalence of RNA/DNA base pairs with I Ching digram coding
Representation of base pairs constituting codons					Conventional I Ching coding
Nucleotide bases (explicit in Table 4)		hydrogen bonds	Nucleotide bases (implicit in Table 4: other strand)		Component of hexagram
structure	code	number	code	nucleotide structure	digram	name
double-ringed	A	2	U (or T)	single- ringed		young yin
single-ringed	U (or T)	2	A	double- ringed		old yin
double-ringed	G	3	C	single- ringed		young yang
single-ringed	C	3	G	double- ringed		old yang

[In this respect note discussion in Conditions of Objective, Subjective and Embodied Cognition: mnemonic systems for memetic coding of complexity, 2007].

In the light of the above correspondences, Chris Lofting (The Book of Structures: wholes, aspects, and the genetic code, 2005) treats the I Ching as a metaphor for the brain's way of dealing with objects (wholes, parts) and relationships (static, dynamic). H notes:

What this leads to is a model of thought based on strings of hexagrams, just as a coding sequence for a protein is based on strings of codons... Using the DNA/RNA pattern, there is a suggestion that we can produce strings that map to thoughts... Using the normal generation of a hexagram, we find that a hexagram links to a specific codon and so we use hexagrams to map strings of codons.

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