How can a cell store information and instructions on how to build a body or do anything at all? I mean it is a cell i don’t get how can it send detailed instructions on how a human body works or where to put the brain or things like that lol
Such as when a women is pregnant how can a cell literally build another human being knowing exactly that it needs 2 arms, 2 legs, 2 eyes a nose, fingers and everything to be in place?
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This is a really complex topic for a 5-year-old. But the basic version is that DNA uses four different letters to make a bunch of three letter words. The combination of those three letter words form the instructions about how to do everything. Human DNA stores about 215 GB of data which is the equivalent to about 145,770,000 pages of information. You can pack a lot of info into 150 million pages. Though to be fair a lot of the data doesn’t actually code anything.
Developmental biology is complicated, but the answer to your specific question – how does the body know where to put things – is a particular set of genes called [homeobox genes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeobox). They work by activating in a way that depends on a cell’s environment during very early development: a cell on the outside has a different environment, so it can “tell” it’s on the outside as opposed to the inside, for example. Those cells then multiply, giving rise to large clusters of cells that all “remember” (though a chemical marker on the DNA) where they came from.
Mutation in those genes cause really wacky developmental weirdness. A famous example is that if you knock out a particular gene in a fruit fly, it’ll grow legs instead of antennae (despite being otherwise normal).
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