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DNA Codes and Information: Formal Structures and Relational Causes

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Abstract

Recently the terms “codes” and “information” as used in the context of molecular biology have been the subject of much discussion. Here I propose that a variety of structural realism can assist us in rethinking the concepts of DNA codes and information apart from semantic criteria. Using the genetic code as a theoretical backdrop, a necessary distinction is made between codes qua symbolic representations and information qua structure that accords with data. Structural attractors are also shown to be entailed by the mapping relation that any DNA code is a part of (as the domain). In this framework, these attractors are higher-order informational structures that obviate any “DNA-centric” reductionism. In addition to the implications that are discussed, this approach validates the array of coding systems now recognized in molecular biology.

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Notes

  1. I use the adjective “hollow” because in this framework DNA-based information seems to become nothing more than an artefact of adaptation.

  2. To borrow a phrase from Stanley N. Salthe

  3. It does not go unrecognized that this trichotomy can also have a Piercean semiotic interpretation.

  4. Note that the mathematical tools used in protein morphology analysis may be quite distinct. It is nonetheless posited that, at some level, the formal insights gained by such tools can ultimately be understood as being aspects of a single structure.

  5. DNA-associated information would perhaps be a more apt term.

  6. The term formal cause—or better yet, formal-structural cause—could be employed here but only as it was understood by the Eastern Roman philosopher Proklos (412–485 AD) [see Siorvanes (1997)] However, I chose not to for fear that my usage would be confused with the more common Aristotelian and neoThomist definitions of formal causation.

  7. The diagram G(g) can be viewed as an instance of the functor G; therefore, the functors G H and G I are more general denotations of G(g h ) and G(g i ), respectively.

  8. As understood here, every relational cause is an extension of a mathematical structure, but not every structure has a corresponding relational cause.

  9. That is to say, Howard Pattee’s symbol/matter dichotomy becomes part of the information/symbol/matter trichotomy that is proposed here, with the proviso that symbols “reflect” information on the one hand and “tether” that information to material embodiments on the other.

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Acknowledgments

I thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on the initial manuscript and for all of their constructive suggestions.

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  1. Biologic Institute, 16310 NE 80th Street, Redmond, WA, 98052, USA

    Richard v. Sternberg

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Sternberg, R.v. DNA Codes and Information: Formal Structures and Relational Causes. Acta Biotheor 56, 205–232 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-008-9049-6

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