User:Anthony.Sebastian/Life/draft/Sebastian Notes

The Information Processing Perspective

• Define information
• Relate to entropy
• Define entopy

Self-Organization

Cellular self-organization emerges in part from the chemical properties of the proteins encoded in genes. Those proteins make their appearance by a genetic transcription-translation machinery, which itself represents a self-organized function emerging in part from the chemical properties of proteins and other molecules. The twice-added qualifier, ‘in part’, reflects the need to invoke evolutionary mechanisms selecting genes that yield proteins whose chemical properties entail interactions that tend to optimize functional self-organization—in other words, adaption to circumstances. Self-organization and adaptation ally.

The Nobel Prize-winning geneticist, Sidney Brenner, expressed it this way:

• ”…biological systems can be viewed as special computing devices. This view emerges from considerations of how information is stored in and retrieved from the genes. Genes can only specify the properties of the proteins they code for, and any integrative properties of the system must be 'computed' by their interactions. This provides a framework for analysis by simulation and sets practical bounds on what can be achieved by reductionist models.”