Question: Why do all living things depend on genes?

Barbara Shih answered on 8 Mar 2015:

I think genes are just a way nature evolved to record “codes” for making molecules that interact with each other. With genes, cells of living things can produce and assemble the required molecules/chemicals for specific functions (some of these functions are extremely unlikely under the normal enviroment). Without these “instructions” from genes, the molecules would not be in the right place (for example, if the molecules are not interacting with each other in the specific manner that allow plants to convert energy from the sun to energy store, carbon dioxide and water are simply not going to mix and make starch naturally).

The DNA system (with A,T,C,G) works in the given environment on earth, but I think a different set of rules might be evolved when given a completely different environment. For instance, scientists have introduced artificial bases (so with A, T, C, G AND X, Y). These added bases can be passed on (when given the artificial raw material), and could potentially encode to new amino acids (the basic components of proteins). http://www.nature.com/news/first-life-with-alien-dna-1.15179 .