Dear all,
In a recent essay by physicist Paul Davies (A quantum recipe for life
--Nature 437, 6 Oct. 2005) there is a series of intriguing assertions:
"Today the cell is regarded not as magic matter but as a computer --an
information processing system and replicating system of astonishing
precision... to get life started all you need is to replicate
information... Quantum Mechanics thus provides an automatic discretization
of genetic information [without the need for complex intermediate
chemistry]... but how complexity emerges in quantum systems is a subject
still in its infancy... the principles involved could be illuminated by
applying algorithmic complexity to quantum information theory...
[Unfortunately] molecular biologists are content with ball and stick models
based on classical concepts...."
Let me make a couple of comments, first, about the off-repeated vision of
life a an "information processing system", which can also be found
literally in most leaders of systems biology ---e.g., Walter Gilbert, Leroy
Hood, Hirachi Kitano. It is a truism in these new fields, that sensibly
identify the subject with the technology used, but it is not so innocuous
as almost automatically it leads to a number of misperceptions: the input /
output scheme, the hardware / software separation (DNA as a program), the
sufficiency of control theory, and also the idealized "neurodynamics" of
behaviorism and functionalism, and all sorts of life-as-mechanism doctrines
(now in the more fashionable dressing of info-processing ). Well, it may be
OK, or perhaps not so disastrous, in the context of particularized
analysis, but as an overall integrative view it means "flat thinking", a
cul-de-sac for informational schemes... And I should stop here, as I
already referred to the subject in previous mails.
Far more interesting (in my opinion) looks the approach to
complexity-growth in the quantum realm. Personally, I am situated at the
other side --hoping that new views on biological complexity and information
will get an unexpected convergence with new quantum interpretations. As
Michael Conrad argued in our Madrid conference (1996, BioSystems): "When we
look at a biological system we are looking at the face of the underlying
physics of the universe." In Davies' comments, however, one has to
appreciate the criticism to molecular biology ball & stick models. The
biomolecule, I argued weeks ago, appears as caught in a very complex
"production and functioning cycle" implying a plurality of actions and
codes, where the exclusive insistence on mechanistic parts or on a "central
dogma" becomes close to a minimalist caricature.
So, where to go? At the time being, let me argue, we cannot advance much
along the really needed bioinformation synthesis without playing --very
wildly-- with new ideas on molecular production/function cycles, molecular
recognition, heterogeneous networks, protein synthesis / degradation,
minimal cellular complexity, cell cycles and checkpoints, cellular
signaling systems, cell-fate specification, asymmetrical cell division,
cell survival, organ and tissue development, physiological and neuronal
circuits... Who knows whether the very bizarre panorama of today will find
very elegant simplifications --every new synthesis appears so "natural"
once it has succeeded!
An important part of FIS agenda might hinge herein.
Thanking the patience!
Pedro
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Received on Tue Dec 13 15:17:36 2005
