Dr Leisola observes there are four biochemical letters in the DNA sequence (pictured), while enzymes have a genetic language of 20 amino acids, ie "letters", and are typically comprised of a sequence of around 300 amino acids

Dr Matti Leisola, expert in enzyme research, is awed by the complexity of living things

Currently Dean of the Chemical and Materials Sciences Faculty at Aalto University in Helsinki, Dr Matti Leisola is a biochemist whose research on enzyme engineering and function and other aspects of biotechnology done under his direction has led to over 120 peer-reviewed scientific papers. He has also obtained six patents and authored 20 scientific articles for books and conferences. His scientific articles are cited over 1300 times in the scientific literature.

Studying enzymes is important, Matti says, because they are “the tools of life”, the catalysts that greatly speed up chemical reactions in living cells.

“They are a type of protein — a macromolecule (large molecule) made out of specifically arranged amino acids,” Matti says. “Enzymes recognize, convert, transfer, transport, oxidize, reduce, and join molecules together and break them apart.”

The instructions to build them are encoded on our DNA. Dr Leisola explains that the enzyme language has 20 biochemical ‘letters’ (amino acids), each of which is coded by three-letter ‘words’ in the DNA language (which has four different letters, A, C, T and G).

For example, ‘Matti Leisola’ is a specific combination of 12 letters and one space: “This combination is so specific that it helps anybody to find me out of all the people in the world since no one else I know of has this same combination. An average enzyme contains about 300 biochemical letters. This makes each enzyme very specialized for a given task.”

There is nothing about the chemistry or the physics of the amino acids that make up an enzyme that will cause them to be ordered in the correct way. The order — the information — is imposed upon the matter via the sequence in which the amino acids are assembled, under programmed instructions within the cell.

Until he went to university, Matti believed this complex biological information arose through evolution; that is, through mutations and natural selection.

He remembers using evolution to argue against the Christian God, because the idea of God both offended and disturbed him.

“I wanted to remain autonomous,” he remembers, “and actually hated the idea of God interfering with my life.”

But his opposition began to be dismantled after his girlfriend Marja (now his wife) decided to surrender her life to the Lord Jesus Christ, and he noticed her joyful attitude and the new love in her heart.

“I was suddenly faced with the reality of her changed life and new values,” he explains.

This led Dr Leisola to study the evidence for Christianity, which resulted in his own decision to trust in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour when he was 22.

Matti realised that there was abundant evidence that Jesus is God since, for example, His body was never found, and many disciples died on the fact that Jesus did rise again. They died proclaiming the Bible’s message that man is separated from God and destined for Hell because of our sins, but Jesus had provided for our forgiveness if we believe He took the death punishment we deserve.

Matt continues: “I then wanted to understand how good a weapon Darwinism was against Christianity, and it did not take much effort to realize that it stood on a shaky foundation.

“I first realised it when studying biochemistry and the weak efforts to explain the origin of life based on some rudimentary experiments. So it all started with a change in my belief system. I like to think that in most fundamental things all men are believers and they use their belief system to interpret the facts and not vice versa.”

His own field of enzyme research strongly argues against evolution and for a designer. He argues that, contrary to common belief, there is no reasonable naturalistic explanation for the origin of such information-rich functional molecules, or to change one type into another.

“It is very difficult to obtain the letter sequence ‘Matti Leisola’ through a random process,” he says. “It is far more difficult, for example, to obtain the biochemical sentence that specifies enzyme ‘xylanase’ (of around 200 amino acids in the correct order).”

Furthermore, natural selection can’t help, since this requires self-reproducing entities, even the simplest of which needs over 350 functioning enzymes.

Matti also points out “the thousands of interrelated and carefully regulated functions in the living world. This is true at many levels: an individual cell, a multicellular organism, symbiotic relationships, and group intelligence and communication systems of e.g. ants and bees, and the balanced ecosystem. And all these remarkable things are coded for by just the four letters of DNA.

Matti Leisola with wife Marja

“Design begins with a thinking process, and a Mind that can simultaneously plan and execute this vast, tremendously complex holistic system, from the smallest detail to its grand totality, is completely beyond our limited capacity to understand.”

With over a hundred published and widely cited scientific papers, Dr Leisola would be amused at

the frequent claim, “No real scientist denies evolution.”

Those who made such statements redefine science as naturalism (the belief that matter is all there is), but, as Matti points out, “A real scientist is searching for truth about nature and not naturalistic explanations.”

But doesn’t belief in creation harm science? Au contraire, Dr Leisola says:
“Christianity is the foundation of modem science and explains why we can do science: a rational God created a rational man in His own image so that he is able to understand the creation with his mind.

“Those believing in a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life are the ones with a blind faith.”

Courtesy Creation Ministries International, creation.com