To manufacture proteins, nucleic acids employ a clever intermediary to form a coded infor-mation channel. It works like this. DNA, the famous double helix, is built like a ladder with four different kinds of rung. The information is stored in the sequences of these rungs, just as an instruction manual records information in sequences of letters. Proteins are built from 20 different amino acids, and the right protein is made only if the amino acids are linked together in the right order.
Nobody knows, but scientists have traditionally divided into two camps on the issue.
That was Monod's view. It is easy to work out the odds against a random chemical mixture just happening to shuffle the appropriate molecules into the elaborate arrangement needed. The numbers are breathtakingly huge. If life as we know it arose by chance, it will have happened only once in the observable Universe. By contrast, biological determinists assume that chance is secondary, and that the right sorts of molecule obligingly form as a result of the laws of nature.