Dichotomy in the definition of prescriptive information suggests both prescribed data and prescribed algorithms: biosemiotics applications in genomic systems
1Control Systems Modeling and Simulation, General Dynamics, Sterling Heights MI, USA and College of Arts and Science, Math Department, University of Phoenix, Detroit MI, USA
2Director, The Gene Emergence Project, The Origin of Life Science Foundation, Inc., 113 Hedgewood Dr., Greenbelt, MD 20770-1610 USA
3Retired Scientist and Professor (APU, U-MD, U-MN & U-WI), 5002 Holly Tree Rd, Wilmington, NC 28409
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Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling 2012, 9:8 doi:10.1186/1742-4682-9-8
Received: 14 December 2011
Accepted: 14 March 2012
Published: 14 March 2012
© 2012 D'Onofrio et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Abstract
The fields of molecular biology and computer science have cooperated over recent years to create a synergy between the cybernetic and biosemiotic relationship found in cellular genomics to that of information and language found in computational systems. Biological information frequently manifests its "meaning" through instruction or actual production of formal bio-function. Such information is called Prescriptive Information (PI). PI programs organize and execute a prescribed set of choices. Closer examination of this term in cellular systems has led to a dichotomy in its definition suggesting both prescribed data and prescribed algorithms are constituents of PI. This paper looks at this dichotomy as expressed in both the genetic code and in the central dogma of protein synthesis. An example of a genetic algorithm is modeled after the ribosome, and an examination of the protein synthesis process is used to differentiate PI data from PI algorithms.
Keywords: Prescriptive Information (PI); Functional Information; algorithm; processing; language; ribosome; biocybernetics; biosemiosis; semantic information; control; regulation; automata; Frame Shift Mutation
