Re: Biological Information

 Dear Colleagues:

 From Ray's original questions about biological information, the
appreciation of cellular information processing (or, more generally,
biological information processing) as being not just about 'computation,'
seems to me to be crucial. The notion of information as an integral part
of the dynamics of the processes using it, that I briefly referred to
earlier in the context of physics and information, seems to be especially
relevant to biological information processing. In particular, it hints to
an answer to the above question as it suggests that biological information
processing shares with the functions it supports the processes that
underlie such functions. Protein synthesis, for example, is a biochemical
process that has a strong information processing content that includes
what we interpret as reading the genetic code. In this sense, biological
information processing is not just 'computation,' but it is closely
related to it.

 Since information processing occurs at various levels of biological
organization, viewing information processing as an integral part of
function brings Werner's statement: "I think the real problem is how one
of those forms of information can be converted into the other," into the
picture. It also relates to the problem stated by Jerry of how to define
the interrelationships between structures of different degrees of
organization.

 A view, or framework, that I use to explore the notion of information as
an integral part of function takes the processes at lower levels of
organization as the infrastructure of information processing at higher
levels. Biological information processing, for example, uses physical and
macromolecular processes as part of this infrastructure. It however, uses
additional forms, or structures, with theur associated dynamics, or
processes, in order to support higher levels of function at the cell,
organism, population, and community levels. More details of this view can
be found in two recent articles, The one in World Futures for FIS96, and
another one that will appear in BioSystems.

 Like Werner Ebeling, I also like Michael Conrad's views on matters of
biological information. The percolation networks framework, in particular,
helps tackling the problem of relating different levels of information and
information processing to each other. This framework considers three main
scales of biological information processing in which specific effects
precolate upwards and downwards between these scales. The quantum speed up
effect, for example, percolates from the microscale (subatomic and atomi
level) to the mesoscale, the level of macromolecules. Macromolecules then
add plasticity, specificity and adaptability to information processing.
This new effect percolates to the macroscale, where the interaction with
the environment takes place.

 I think that the percolation networks framework clarifies some important
aspects of the view of information as an integral part of function,
helps relate computation to biological processes (including social and
organizational processes), and further clarifies the relationship between
information and function. The view of information as an integral part of
function also sheds light into the nature of the mapping functions between
levels of organization mentioned by Jerry.

 I personally think that the nature of the mapping of a level in which
some kind of symbolic information processing first becomes apparent, to
its immediately lower level, is crucial to a unified view of information.

 Regards,

 Roberto
Received on Wed Mar 11 00:17:25 1998