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A Gallery of Organic Codes

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Code Biology

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Abstract

The discovery of the genetic code has revealed the existence of a deep parallel between protein synthesis and language. In both cases, a small set of units is used to create an unlimited variety of objects by arranging the units in countless different combinations. In technical terms this process is called recursion, and the presence of recursion at the molecular level raised the possibility that there is a molecular language at the basis of life (Beadle and Beadle 1966). At the same time, however, the first models of the genetic code were all based on the stereochemical hypothesis, the idea that the coding rules are dictated by chemical relationships in three dimensions, whereas language is made of arbitrary conventions. Eventually, however, the stereochemical hypothesis had to be abandoned because it became clear that the rules of the genetic code are not the result of chemical necessity. In this sense they are as arbitrary as the rules of language, and this makes us realize that at the molecular level there is not only recursion but also arbitrariness.

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  1. Dipartimento di Morfologia ed Embriologia, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

    Marcello Barbieri

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Barbieri, M. (2015). A Gallery of Organic Codes. In: Code Biology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14535-8_3

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