Introduction

Abstract

Information propagation and processing pervades biological systems. While it is known that there is information processing and propagation at the various levels of detail, such as within gene regulatory networks, within chemical pathways in cells, between cells in a tissue, and between organisms of a population, how this occurs and how information is processed in living systems is still poorly understood. For example, it is not yet entirely understood how gene networks process the information contained in changes in the temporal level of an mRNA so as to distinguish a stochastic fluctuation from a message containing valuable information regarding another genes state. In recent decades, information theoretical methods and other tools, originally developed in the context of engineering and natural sciences, have been applied to study various aspects of diverse biological processes and systems. This book includes chapters on how the processing of information in biological processes is currently understood in various topics, ranging from information processing and propagation in gene regulatory networks to information processing in biological olfaction and natural language. We aim at presenting an overview on the state-of-art on how information processing relates to biological systems and the opinion of current leaders in the field on future directions of research.