Question

Assume that the ereditary information carried in genes and DNA is responsible for many differences observed in humans and oter living things. How could just 4 different bases in DNA strands be responsible for the almost endless varitey found in nature?

Answer 1

I assume you mean "hereditary"
I'd like to start by fixing a grammatical error:
We don't need to assume the first sentence, since it is a statement of fact.

So, the basics are this:
1. The order of the bases matter, AAA and AGA will make different proteins and thus have different effects.
2. The order of the codons (the three bases that 'tell' a cell to make a protein) matters. This is because certain proteins only function if others are present, and will function differently if some other protein is present.
3. The same sequences can have different effects (like I mentioned above in the case of codons, but its also affects complex proteins in much the same way).

Answer 2

you see, there are 22 proteinogenic amino acids. a protein with the length 100 amino acids would have 22^100 sequence possibilities. that is more than molecules in the universe :)

now in advanced biochemistry, you will see that this numbe will never be reached since all proteins are built out of functional units. but even the order of functional units varies into many million possibilities. through alternative splicing, the information put into DNA is also magnified!

THIS accounts for the endless variety.

Answer 3

Interestingly enough, DNA/RNA doesn't even use all the available combinations of bases O.o