Month: September 2022

INFORMATION AS A PROPERTY. "The central position of information in biology is not itself especially new or radical. What is often sidestepped, however, is the fact that in biological systems information is not merely a way to label states, but a property of the system." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

CAUSAL EFFICACY. "To be explicit, biological information is distinctive because it possesses a type of causal efficacy —it is the information that determines the current state and hence the dynamics (and therefore also the future state(s)." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

LIFE REDEFINED. "We postulate that it is the transition to context-dependent causation—mediated by the onset of information control—that is the key defining characteristic of life." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

GREY ZONE SHIFT. "We therefore identify the transition from non-life to life with a fundamental shift in the causal structure of the system, specifically a transition to a state in which algorithmic information gains direct, context-dependent, causal efficacy over matter." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

CHICKENS & EGGS. "A longstanding debate—often dubbed the chicken or the egg problem—is which came first, genetic heredity or metabolism? A conundrum arises because neither can operate without the other in contemporary life, where the duality is manifested via the genome–proteome systems." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

ANALOG OR DIGITAL. "The chicken-or-egg problem, as traditionally posed, thus amounts to a debate of whether analogue or digital hardware came first." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

PROBLEM SOLVED. "A widely accepted resolution to the seemingly inextricable duality of genotype–phenotype is that the modern ‘DNA–protein’ world evolved from simpler precursor system involving only one major molecular species that played both the role of information carrier and of enzymatic catalyst. In modern organisms, RNA is a biochemical mediator, enabling the translation of DNA to protein." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

ANALOG CHEMISTRY. "The proteome, and in fact nearly all biochemical interactions in the cell, processes information in an analogue format, i.e. through chemical reactions which rely on continuous rates." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

DIGITAL TO ANALOG. "Much of the information digitally stored in DNA must first be transcribed and translated before it becomes algorithmically meaningful in the context of the cell where it is then processed as analogue information through protein interaction networks." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

PROTEIN ANALOG PHASE. "Focusing strictly on digital storage therefore neglects this critical aspect of how biological information is processed." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn