I re-post this entry from the sister blog Wonderverse
Learning a new language is no easy task but it can be a lot of fun! I find particularly fascinating to see how our brain gradually gets to grips with new rules, pronunciation and idiosyncrasy until the magic happens and one just ‘gets it’.
With its special set of signs, arrows and rules science too has its own language. This helps scientists to express and share the content of their specific knowledge. The symbolic languages of mathematics, physics and chemistry have the tremendous advantage of making their communication simple, rigorous, unambiguous and, some might even argue, beautiful. However, it is its universality that makes a scientific language really unique, to the point that when I write for instance the formula H2O I do not need to add anything else in order to be understood by anyone around the globe whatever language they speak.
The language of nature is based on chemistry, and chemistry speaks molecules. So, in a sense, a part from my native Italian, my grasp of English and some basic Turkish, I also speak…chemistry!
The analogy between the spoken classical languages and the language of chemistry has already been suggested among many by 1987 chemistry Nobel-laureate Jean-Marie Lehn who famously noted how «(…) atoms are letters, molecules are the words, supramolecular entities are the sentences and the chapters».[1]
The chemical alphabet consists of around 110 symbols representing the chemical elements. The combination of more symbols follows a series of (chemical) rules that somehow resemble those we find for the formation of words and phrases. To continue with our analogy, the chemical syntax defines how our chemical objects are put together – that is their structure – whereas the chemical semantics is rather concerned with the meaning – that is their function of a molecular structure. These two levels, that is, chemical syntax and chemical semantic, are profoundly intertwined and they are well known to chemists and molecular biologist for the crucial interplay that exists in molecular systems between function and structure.
From a simple molecule, like that of water, to the huge biopolymers, the information contained in a molecule is embedded into its structure, that is, into the spatial connectivity of the atoms linked together to form it. But it is only when that molecule enters into a particular interaction with other molecules that that package of information can actually convey its semantic cargo and perform its function.
For instance, the wealth of information encoded into the RNA would be meaningless if we did not have ribosomes in our cells able to interact with it and perform its precious decoding job. In other words, it is the relationship between the RNA and the ribosome that allows that important communication to happen.
We know from common experience that a language is always a shared experience, a rich tapestry of meanings and symbols based on relationships. This seems to be true as much for the spoken language as it is for the language of Nature.
[1] J. M. Lehn, Supramolecular Chemistry: Concepts and Perspectives, 1 ed., Wiley VCH, Weinheim, 1995.
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