Howard,
Thanks for the link to your paper provided by your 4/5 biosemiotics email which I just finished reading. Although there are many elements of your theory of biological information with I like, there are some I find difficult to accept: H: “The general concept of information does not belong in the category of universal and inexorable physical laws but in the category of initial conditions and boundary conditions. . . . . “ S: I remember arguing with you on this same point years ago on the OCA list, I believe it was. I can see that physical laws and initial/boundary conditions are different, but I don’t see how we can say that the concept of “information” does not apply to the former but only to the latter. To me, both the Newton’s laws of motion and their initial/boundary conditions entailed by their specific applications carry information because they are both signs standing to somebody for something other than themselves. I believe that there are two kinds of biological information --- static and dynamic informations --- the former can be identified with the information carried by Prigogine’s “equilibrium structures” (e.g., DNA sequence information, 3-D structures of proteins; hence to be called “equilibrium” information) and the latter with the information carried by his “dissipative structures” (e.g., waveforms of sounds, chemical concentrations, etc.; hence to be called “dissipative” information). “Equilibrium” information is rate- and energy-independent as you have been correctly pointing out, unlike “dissipative” information, such as the mRNA concentration-wave patterns measured with microarrays that critically depend on rates and energy dissipation. It is well –established (i) that the concentrations of mRNA molecules in living cells are determined by the balance of two opposing processes – transcription and transcript degradation and (ii) that many cell functions are determined by intracellular levels of mRNA, leading to the so-called "IDS-cell function identity hypothesis" [1, 2]. In conclusion, I would like to suggest that (i) there are at least two kinds of biological information active in living cells – quilibrium information (I_e) and dissipative information (I_d), (ii) I_e is energy- and rate-independent in that the symbol strings are iso-energetic, and (iii) cell functions depend on I_d produced by “activating” or “reading” I_e driven by energy-dissipating processes called transcription controlled by environmental factors, thus leading to the fusion of the genetic and the environmental informations in specific cell functions. References: [1] Ji, S. (2012). Molecular Theory of the Living Cell: Concepts, Molecular Mechanisms and Biomedical Applications. Springer, New York. Pp. 398-405. [2] Ji, S. (1985). The Bhopalator – A Molecular Model of the Living Cell Based on the Concepts of Conformons and Dissipative Structures. <http://www.conformon.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Bhopalator_11.pdf> *J. theoret. Biol. **116**:*399-426. See Step 20 in Figure 1. PDF available at http://www.conformon.net under Publicaitons > Refereed Journal Articles. -- Sungchul Ji, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy Rutgers University Piscataway, N.J. 08855 732-445-4701 www.conformon.net
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