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I am not the one to answer your closing question, yet I think
physics is (a bit?) more open than the so far established info we call
biology (and related domains). So speculations
go further than in the "life-sciences" whatever we call those.
*
Your Table (logical as it is) misses the '3rd' column: the
"Assimilative" input part from beyond the boundaries of a cell (spatial or
temporal). Of course! we have very limited
knowledge to touch this part.
*
DNA is described as a QM-object, to the extent of our present knowledge of
the assigned domain. So it is not surprising to find in this math-based imaging
the ubiquitous
particle-wave uncertainty. We may discover other qualia in wider pertinent
domains of the subject, with less uniformity than a formal math treatment. (I
hope). We are far from an
intrinsic understanding of all the processes involving the ideas what
"DNA-science of 2008" is a representative of.
John M
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 11:27
PM
Subject: Watson-Crick and Prigoginian
forms of genetic information
There is no doubt that cells are capable of transmitting
information in
space (e.g.,from the nucleus to the cytosol and to the
adjacent cells) and
in time (e.g., from one cell generation to the next in
developing
organisms or from one population of organisms to next in
evolution).
The molecular mechanisms underlying the information
transmission in time
(i.e., through transfer of DNA sequences) has been
well established
throughout the latter half of the 20th century following
the discoveries
of the double helical structure of DNA by Watson and Crick
in 1953 and
the genetic code in the 1960's. But the mechanisms
responsible for the
information transmission through space has not been
widely discussed in the
biological literature, despite the fact that the
relevant experiments have
been vigorously persued, for example, in the
fields of cell-cell
communications and signal transduction pathways in
individual cells.
Consequently, the contemporary concept of genetic
information (i.e.,
genes) has been, it seems to me, unjustifiably biased
in favor of the time
dimension at the sacrifice of the spatial
dimension. The main purpose of
this post is to contribute to righting
this bias, with the hope of
defining genes in a more realistic manner for
the post-ENCODE
(Encyclopedia of DNA elements) genomics.
In 1988 [1]
I proposed that there are two types of genetic information in
the cell --
the traditional sequence-centered information (referred to as
the
Watson-Crick form) and the new, dynamic information encoded
in
concentration waves such as ion gradients and time-dependent RNA levels
in
the cell (referred to as the Prigoginian form). The Prigoginian
form of
genetic information (or Prigoginian genes, for short) can be
identified
with "intracellular dissipative structures" (IDSs), the final
form of
gene expression according to the Bhopalator model of the cell
[2]. In [1]
I have proposed the following
ideas:
1) Watson-Crick genes => information
transmission in time
2) Prigoginian genes =>
information transmission in space,
where "=>" means "is responsible
for" or "can mediate".
Examples of information transmission in space
and time are familiar to us
through music and
languages:.
1) Information transmission in
time = Sheet music; written languages
2)
Information transmission in space = Audio music; spoken languages
We
can summarize all these ideas in a tabular form:
Table 1. The
duality of the mechanisms of information
transmission
in
linguistics, musicology, and cell
biology.
_____________________________________________________________________
Information Transmission
in
____________________________________________________
Information
Space
Time
Carriers
(or
Signs)
______________________________________________________________________
Macroscopic
Audio
music
Sheet
music
Spoken
language
Written language
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - -
Microscopic Dissipative
structures Equilibrium
structures
(e.g., concentration waves) (e.g., DNA
segments)
(Prigoginian genes)
(Watson-Crick
genes)
_______________________________________________________________________
It
is interesting to note that the information transmission in space utilizes
waves of sounds or concentrations, whereas the information in space utilizes
discrete material objects of either microscopic (e.g., DNA sequences) or
macroscopic (e.g., words, musical notes) dimensions. Thus, it appears that the
duality of spatial and temporal mechanisms of information transfer ultimately
depends on the duality of waves and particles. Since DNA is a quantum
mechanical object, it is not surprising that it should exhibit both particle
and wave properties.
Does anybody on this list know if a similar
relation between the space-time duality and the wave-particle duality is
observed in physics?
With all the
best.
Sung
Reference:
[1] Ji, S.
(1988). Watson-Crick and Prigoginian forms of Genetic Information.
J.theoretical Biology 130:239-245.
[2] Ji, S. (1985). The
Bhopalator--a molecular model of the living cell based on the concepts of
conformons and dissipative structures. J. theoret. Biol.
116:399-426.
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