Its 100% digital, this is a well established fact of biology. Arbitrary meaning the codon amino cid assignments are not determined by chemistry or physics, another well established fact.
The digital code of DNA | Nature.
See, what it means when one says
'its a 100% digital' is that this is what one needs in order to explain how it currently works. In other words, its a model humans use to explain to other humans in a way that they can understand.
I wonder how/whether there would be such an explanation had computers and Information Sytems theory had not been, co-incidentally, under development at the same time? After all, that was the co-incident paradigm shift in vogue when Watson and Crick announced their research findings, no?
From the above paper:
We believe that a systems approach to biology is the key. It is clear, however, that this approach poses significant challenges, both scientific and cultural. The discovery of DNA structure started us on this journey, the end of which will be the grand unification of the biological sciences in the emerging, information-based view of biology.
An information systems approach is very much based on people's
beliefs and predictions therefrom. Its easily noticeable that it works very well from that singular research avenue
purpose and has provided an abundance of practically useful in-roads into issues in Biology, and (as mentioned) the Information Systems approach happened to be very much in vogue around Watson and Crick's time (early 1960s).
Less generally, the purpose for latching onto that particular way of thinking about it (and model) was
specifically to explain how genetic information is stored and copied in living organisms ... but who says
that is life's
'purpose'? Was that Watson/Crick, (etc)? What is life's purpose? I frankly don't know, but I do know that it
necessarily isn't the
only question worthy of investigation.
Other unknown model(s), or ways of thinking about life in a natural environment, other than an information systems model, could still produce other insights into how it came about .. we just don't know, yet I do see a lot of work coming from completely different approaches .. namely the field of Molecular Evolution/Biology.
