[Fis] cell signaling: COMMUNICATION

Dear FIS colleagues,

One of the main avenues for advancing the biological consequences of the
new mol. recognition views discussed here might concern cell
signaling. Let me please expostulate a few a ideas about that.

In principle, the constellation of molecular recognition events that occur
throughout the cellular membrane looks ordinary pysico-chemistry, 'business
as usual', be it related to receptors, channels, transporters, pumps, or
just to pores. Precisely by means of this series of molecular components
(the 'signalome' of the cell, to follow the bioinformatic jargon) the cell
itself couples specifically to particular happenstances at its outside
('abduces' them, as we discussed in this list).

The term 'abduction' has to be entered because the signalome itself is in a
state of flow, and will change quite dynamically in response both to the
external items and to the advancement of the life cycle of the cell. And
this needs quite a bit of emphasis: by selectively communicating with the
environment and by channeling inner/outer resources of free energy the
living cell can keep itself 'one step ahead' of the surrounding conditions,
and may continue the advancement of its life cycle just by closing or
opening the appropriate molecular windows. Putting together the inner codes
of the generative information of the cell, plus the catalytic capabilities
of its structural machinery, plus the selective communication srategies:
the cellular entity may behave 'anticipatorily'.

This behavior of life departs from mechanics and from ordinary physical
matter. The living cell couples to its 'boundary conditions' through
COMMUNICATION, and by doing so it separates its informational dynamics from
the mechanical coupling through FORCE that belongs to mere mechanics, to
the 'non-informed' matter. Along this conceptual thread we could connect
with Robert Rosen and his search for a new kind of maths which could
describe life --just let us note that dynamically the living matter has no
'state'; rather it has a 'phase' that has to be referred to the advancement
of a life cycle.

We have to contemplate a cellular 'factory' that systematically couples
generative and structural classes of information in a variable way that
depends on the communication results, on the signals picked up from the
boundary conditions. This becomes evolutionarily significant up to the
point that the whole phenomenon of multicellularity (nervous systems
included) is based on the communication strategy --actually most of the
effective coding space of the eukaryotic genome is devoted to the signalome
molecular agents and their cohort of associated molecules enegaged in the
communicational activities. All an organism has to do is to send a 'signal'
and let circulate free energy --to let the transfer of knowledge from the
generative to the production of a series of structurally acting machines to
occur.

In its own right, communication has to be seen as the third informational
dimension of life always, accompanying and orienting the generative and the
structural coupling. And perhaps communication can be directly
related with the organismic 'constraints' we discussed last year
(Christophe). Constraints would appear just as massive (populational)
communication acts.

The molecular recognition 'frontier' opens new paths both towards physics
and towards biology (indeed its discussion is a very long-term concern, far
beyond the very limited inroads we could do during these weeks). My
personal hope is that it will contribute to put an end to the 'Darwinian
constipation' that theoretical biology is suffering from very long ago and
will pave the way towards an elegant bioinformation approach.

Best greetings

Pedro

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Received on Mon Sep 29 14:51:24 2003