Re: [Fis] cell signaling: COMMUNICATION

From: by way of <[email protected]>
Date: Tue 30 Sep 2003 - 10:18:48 CEST

Dear Pedro

You are getting closer and closer to Biosemiotics in your overall view.
But we need to distinguish between information and meaning (bio-psyc and
psyc.-social), signal, sign and language. To me the informational mostly
starts with the chemical because here the pattern fitting becomes the
most important form of interaction.

"Pedro C. Mariju�n" wrote:
>
> 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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-- 
Best wishes S�ren Brier
Copenhagen Business School
Dept. of Management, Politics and Philosophy
Bl�g�rdsgade 23 B, 3. floor, room 326, DK-2200 Copenhagen N.
Telephone +45 38152208, mail sbr.lpf@cbs.dk .
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http://www.flec.kvl.dk/personalprofile.asp?id=sbr&p=engelsk
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Subscription sandra@imprint.co.uk
Speaker at the Heinz von Foerster conference
http://www.asc-cybernetics.org/2003/index.htm
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Received on Tue Sep 30 14:11:06 2003

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