if the four basic nucleobases decide gene outcome (ACGT), but have strict complementary base pairing (A-C & G-T), are there then four values to variate with or just two, like binary?

Question

**Correction**: A-T & C-G, not ~~A-C & G-T~~
The question arose from [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/k3b4ba/just_like_computers_speak_in_binary_1s_and_0s_the/ge2jzil?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), where I compared binary code to human DNA’s ACGT, then someone who knows more about IT than me made a good question.

If it’s not clear what I’m asking yet:
in binary you can have a lot of variation with the values 1 and 0
in human DNA (if we ignore RNA and (U)racil for now) there are four values, A, C, G, T. But since they bind strictly A-C & G-T doesn’t that technically leave DNA with only two factors to variate with?

Like: ~~A-C, A-C, G-T, A-C~~ A-T, A-T, C-G, A-T
Instead of: AGTATAC

In: Biology

Answer 1

This isn’t very ELI5, but it is difficult to do with this topic. The nucleotides in DNA thymine, cytosine, guanine and adenine are grouped into batches of three which act like a byte in a computer program for assembling a protein, each of these codons represents a start, an amino acid or a stop instruction resulting in the correct sequence of amino acids being assembled to complete the protein. – https://youtu.be/DfaPwWCvN5s