DNA Information?

[juantonwan]

When you hear people talk about the "information" in DNA, are they referring to the ordering/sequencing of the bases(AGCT)? The bases themselves are not information, correct? It is only information or instructions, once the bases are ordered properly, so are people talking about this order information, or the information that tells the bases how to be ordered?

[Lifeson]

I always viewed it as a combination of things, starting from the most basic to the more complex. All in all they are all bits of information. For example, the bases make up codons which code for genes which code for amino acids that make up proteins. So each part of DNA, in my mind, can be considered a piece of information. for example, think of each letter in this reply as a base pair. Without these letters, you can't make words, which in this example make codons. Without words you can't make sentences which would be amino acids in this example. And without sentences I can't form this reply which would be the protein. So base pairs are a form of information as you need them to get to the next, more complicated level.

[CharonY]

The very basic information is the order of the bases. It can refer to regions (or loci) that are coding for RNA but it may also apply to regulatory regions that are not transcribed. Nothing tells the bases how they are ordered per se, one strand just gets replicated complementary to the existing one. I.e. there is no higher ordering mechanism.