Information, Genetics and Entropy

• Main Author: Julio Ernesto Rubio Barrios
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina 2015-04-01
• Series: Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology
• Subjects: Information Theory; Molecular Biology; Maxwell’s Demon; Genetic Information
• Online Access: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/principia/article/view/38782

The consolidation of the informational paradigm in molecular biology research concluded on a system to convert the epistemic object into an operational technological object and a stable epistemic product. However, the acceptance of the informational properties of genetic acids failed to clarify the meaning of the concept of information. The “information”’ as a property of the genetic molecules remained as an informal notion that allows the description of the mechanism of inheritance, but it was not specified in a logic–semantic structure. The metaphorical implications associated with the idea of genes as molecules with meaning, questioned the linguistics that seemed too foreign to molecular biology. A reformulation of the concept of information in molecular biology was developed upon the theory of Claude Shannon. The node for the structural coupling between biology, physics and information theory was the identification of an analog structure between the coded messages of Shannon’s theory.