Code

Definition

At first and most basically, a code defines a mapping between one type of information and another. For instance, the ASCII code in computer science is the binary translation of our alphabet, mapping, for instance, the lowercase character “a” onto “1100001” and making possible for computers to store, treat, and exploit information expressed in words. “Code” is one of those terms that testify to the strong intellectual connection and mutual conceptual enrichment that, since Turing, Von Neumann, and the former systemic and cybernetic schools, has always existed between biology and computer science. Interestingly enough, the different meanings of this term in computer science is mirrored by a progressive semantic enrichment also of its use in biology.

Overview

The most celebrated biological code is without doubt the “genetic” one which maps triplets of four possible nucleotides (“A,” “T,” “G,” “C”) onto 1 of the 20 amino acids found in the proteinsof living organisms. For...