On why I'm taking a biochemistry course

I am fascinated by the fact that DNA works.  I am fascinated by the idea that chemistry and physics are intimately involved in how it works.  I want to know more about why and how the apparently most important chemical in our bodies works.

When I was at school, my best subject was Chemistry.  Yet I specialised in physics.

Physics teaches that there is an immutable set of laws that govern the behaviour of all matter.  These laws govern the miniscule, the infinitesimal and the macro scale of our universe.  One of those laws, talks about all things being local.  Nothing exists on the grand scale, except through the local interactions of matter, the electrical and atomic forces that exist on different atoms and molecules, the spins of molecules, and the multidimensional folding of chains of atoms.  The local interactions extend upwards through the emergent systems of larger scales.  But those emergent systems only exist because of the underlying chemical and physical properties of matter.

A chemical law that emerges from the underlying physics is that all inter-matter dependencies rely on the exchange of energy.  Chemical reactions can be exothermic or they can be endothermic.  Often, reactions exist in some kind of equilibrium, where a continuous exchange of energy (thermal and chemical?) results in a stasis, an apparently static arrangement.  Maybe there is energy in the environment that varies and changes the nature of the stasis.  As the environmental energy levels change so does the equilibrium point of a chemical reactions.

Lastly there is the fundamental law of physics, that of Entropy.  Everything is going to slow down, and lead to the ultimate energy death of the universe.

How does DNA operate in such a way not to violate these laws?  What are the basic mechanisms of cell biology that enable the cell to function?  When scientists talk about DNA generating enzymes that influence behaviour on an organism level, what is the basic energy equation that enables this to occur and then to continue to occur?  When a mitochondrion delivers a molecule of ATP how can it do that?  What “benefit” does the mitochondrion receive in return?  What is the energy gradient through a cell, that enables transport through a cell and then beyond its membrane?

How does DNA function over distance?  What is the driving force that leads to its replication?  Why and how?

Everything else flows from that.  Evolution, human society.  It all depends on the mechanisms, physical and chemical, of DNA.

Whether a study of biochemistry will reveal answers to these questions remains to be seen.  Maybe the study will show that I am asking the wrong questions.  Whatever the answers, I am taking an undergraduate course in biochemistry.  There may be other ways of doing this, but the idea of getting a degree in the subject is appealing, now in my retirement.