The Genetic Code Viewed Through Systemic Functional Linguistics

Davies & Gribbin (1992: 284-5):

Nucleic acids are responsible for storing and transmitting all the information required to build the organism and make it function — the genetic code. The code includes instructions for the manufacture of specific enzymes and specific structural proteins. One type of nucleic acid, DNA (short for deoxyribonucleic acid), takes the form of the now familiar long-chain molecules wound into a double helix. The double helix is where the information needed to replicate and operate the organism is encoded.

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From the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, the genetic code is an identifying relation between two levels of abstraction: chemical tokens (DNA molecules) and biological values (genes). The identity encodes genes by reference to DNA molecules, and decodes DNA molecules by reference to genes.

From this perspective, the relation between codons of DNA and amino acids is the realisation relation between system and structure, with each codon being a specific selection expression of the DNA system.

The emergence of the genetic code is the emergence of chemistry as tokens of biological values.