Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Liam S. on July 6, 2012 at 4:30pm

Of course, DNA is NOT information... it only appears that way when we, as humans, organize it and assign it letters and try to analyze the representative code (that WE constructed to describe the molecule).

DNA is a molecule and those, unlike books, hieroglyphs and computer software, we know can assemble unassisted, can replicate unassisted, can duplicate, mutate and change unassisted - so I reject the "information" hypothesis as a necessary or entirely honest assessment of the nature of DNA. 

If DNA were just a sequence of letters with no intrinsic function in making replicas of the information, Dr. Meyer might have a point. But it isn't. 

Permalink Reply by Jack Bauer on July 6, 2012 at 4:43pm

I'm not a biologist ... but it sure seems like information.  We assigned letters to the base pairs ... but, if I'm not mistaken, the sequence of the base pairs themselves govern biological function, from the minute to the grandiose.  That sequence is significant regardless of whether we assign letters and try to decode it.  (I think they just found the gene that governs breast size.  I'm thinking Nobel Prize.)

 

DNA doesn't communicate with us -- which is why we have to decode, re-organize and analyze to understand what we're looking at -- but it is biologically informational.

JB

Permalink Reply by Liam S. on July 6, 2012 at 5:04pm

It contains information of a sort, but it is not a code and does not communicate - it is a chemical reaction, interacting with the cell under certain conditions - just as sodium and water will react exothermically under many conditions to burn/explode - it is the same kind of "code" that causes that reaction. The sequence of DNA is not a code - it is a physical structure that provides the template for those reactions. 

 

It would be like looking at a tree, and deciding that the branches and leaves are a code with instructions on how to interact with sunlight and air to produce oxygen and energy and carbon to build new cells - and indeed if we give them numbers and letters and organize the tree on paper, it will appear this way, but this is not the case. They function that way, but do not communicate information - they just do. It's is easy for us to mistake the metaphors we use to describe some of the apparent functions of DNA (but not all of them), for the nature of DNA. 

 

I feel like I'm scrambling my ideas here - it has been a long day. Ultimately, I think this is a fallacy caused by the way we popularly discuss such a complex structure - and sure, it is analogous in many ways to how we understand man made codes... without being the reality of what it is and does.

 

Good blog posts describing this are here:

http://www.science20.com/chatter_box/dna_when_code_not_code

http://livinglifewithoutanet.wordpress.com/2009/07/05/dna-is-not-a-...

http://morsdei.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/the-gambit-of-falsehoods/

Permalink Reply by Jack Bauer on July 6, 2012 at 5:16pm

"It contains information of a sort" is close enough to just  "information" for me.

 

I understand that it is a physical molecular structure and that the process is chemical and physical, not informational.  That isn't the point.  The point is that the physical structure -- the sequences of base pairs -- is intricate, and significant to the biological outcome ... that the 'information' (of a sort) contained therein is the foundation of biological function.  That an individual's physical attributes are 'written' (of a sort) before they ever come to be.

 

That's 'informational' enough to make the point.  The rest is semantics.

JB

Permalink Reply by Liam S. on July 6, 2012 at 5:19pm

The "semantic" difference is where the entire discussion about the distinction between something which can arise via selection/mutation/duplication and intentional creation, exists. And where the problem of simplification and analogy, can lead us to something that is not necessarily reflected in the molecular reality. A discussion that is not based in biology - but just our words to try to explain what none of us (generally speaking) understand well enough to discuss on its own terms. 

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