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Information In The Living Body

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Voltage-Sensitive Ion Channels
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Information streams from our surroundings, enters our sense organs and converges on the brain. There it is processed, with information previously stored, to issue an outgoing stream of commands to our muscles and glands. In touch with our surroundings, we use information to carry out our life activities.

To promote their survival, organisms need information: from which direction the sun is shining, where food and water can be found, how to avoid predators. The negative entropy of the organism's metabolism can be applied to make that information available. The problem, then, is to convert this information into survival-enhancing responses to environmental stimuli. This requires information processing, which occurs at all the hierachical levels of the organism.

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H. Richard Leuchtag

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(2009). Information In The Living Body. In: Leuchtag, H.R. (eds) Voltage-Sensitive Ion Channels. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5525-6_2

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