How do you think a code consisting of so few characters can encode the instructions for building thousands of different proteins?

There are so many combinations of these four letters - A,T,G and C - that every combination creates a unique and distinctive characteristic. We can easily give example of alphabet and words. While English alphabet has 26 letters, there are thousands of possible words and millions of possible sentences, or maybe even more. 

element

Explanation:

An element cannot be broken down by any chemical means. However, nuclear reactions can lead to the generation of new elements.