Archetypal Otherness -- DNA vs. I Ching: Climbing Elven Stairways (Part B)

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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.

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

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Correspondences and complementarities: steps on the spiral way

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.

Table 3 : 20 different amino acids used by living cells to encode proteins that are directly encoded for protein synthesis by the standard genetic code (originally hypothesized because 3 is the smallest n such that 4n is at least 20) [Source: table on Gene expression and biochemistry in Wikipedia. Notes omitted]
Amino Acid	Abbreviations		Codon(s) in RNA [triplets of 3 nucleotides from Table 2, using U instead of T ]	Occurrence in proteins (%)	Essential (X) / Conditionally (C) in humans
Alanine	A	Ala	GCU, GCC, GCA, GCG	7.8	-
Cysteine	C	Cys	UGU, UGC	1.9	C
Aspartic acid	D	Asp	GAU, GAC	5.3	-
Glutamate	E	Glu	GAA, GAG	6.3	-
Phenylalanine	F	Phe	UUU, UUC	3.9	X
Glycine	G	Gly	GGU, GGC, GGA, GGG	7.2	C
Histidine	H	His	CAU, CAC	2.3	-
Isoleucine	I	Ile	AUU, AUC, AUA	5.3	X
Lysine	K	Lys	AAA, AAG	5.9	X
Leucine	L	Leu	UUA, UUG, CUU, CUC, CUA, CUG	9.1	X
Methionine	M	Met	AUG	2.3	X
Asparagine	N	Asn	AAU, AAC	4.3	-
Proline	P	Pro	CCU, CCC, CCA, CCG	[Parts: Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ] This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License For further updates on this site, subscribe here