In philology, decipherment is the discovery of the meaning of texts written in ancient or obscure languages or scripts.[1] Decipherment in cryptography refers to decryption.[2] The term is used sardonically in everyday language to describe attempts to read poor handwriting.[3] In genetics, decipherment is the successful attempt to understand DNA, which is viewed metaphorically as a text containing word-like units.[4] Throughout science the term decipherment is synonymous with the understanding of biological and chemical phenomena.