Biological information
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Biological information Jürgen Jost1,2 Received: 9 September 2020 / Accepted: 22 October 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In computer science, we can theoretically neatly separate transmission and processing of information, hardware and software, and programs and their inputs. This is much more intricate in biology. Nevertheless, I argue that Shannon’s concept of information is useful in biology, although its application is not as straightforward as many people think. In fact, the recently developed theory of information decomposition can shed much light on the complementarity between coding and regulatory, or internal and environmental information. The key challenge that we formulate in this contribution is to understand how genetic information and external factors combine to create an organism, and conversely how the genome has learned in the course of evolution how to harness the environment, and analogously how coding, regulation and spatial organization interact in cellular processes. Keywords Information · Information decomposition · Coding vs. regulatory information · Genetic information and environment
Introduction Fundamental scientific concepts seem to have the tendency to give rise to much confusion, and the concept of information certainly is no exception. Remarkably, however, the concept of information is relatively uncontroversial in computer science. Its application in quantum physics created quantum information theory. The confusions of the two most prominent opponents on the foundations of quantum physics, Bohr and Einstein, have been overcome, and in particular, the objections of Bohr have been conclusively refuted by experiments confirming the phenomenon predicted by Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (2015) if quantum theory were right, but considered as so absurd by them as to refute quantum theory. To clarify the issue, Schrödinger introduced the concept of entanglement. As a consequence, quantum information theory is now a striving field with the potential for important technological applications.
In other fields like biology or cognition, however, the debates and controversies about the concept of information have not yet been concluded. Some of these concern the questionable applicability of metaphors from computer science in those domains, and others simply come from misunderstandings. And philosophers who tried to enter the debates did not always make the situation clearer. Of course, several people did come up with positive insight and suggested clarifications, but unfortunately, not all of that has been generally accepted so far. It may therefore not be completely useless to develop a systematic analysis of biological information. That is what I shall attempt here. The role of information for understanding cognition will be discussed elsewhere, so that here I can concentrate on biology. A small technical point: I shall mainly speak about organisms, that is, multicellular eukaryotes. I shall also repeatedly invoke the example of viruses. Obviously, what I shall say will also
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