Information Theory with Applications to Biogenesis and Evolution

Abstract

The representation theorem and the channel capacity theorem of information theory are applied to the molecular biology of biogenesis and evolution. From the information theoretic point of view it is essentially incredible for a particular given protein to arise de novo by chance alone. Genetic information could arise in a series of steps in which a useful sequence of amino acids or a sequence of improved specificity arises by chance. Such an improvement will be incorporated in the genome in a time short compared to the time required to appear by chance. One-to-one codes are part of the modern protein synthesis and may have been used by the most early form of life. The environment would have been modified by the generation of new substances. A one-to-one code may have led to a binary code and then to the modern triplett code. At each step the primitive life may have modified its environment irreversibly. Proteins with specificity may form a chain so that one is transformed to another by a series of amino acid substitutions, additions or deletions. There may be many such paths of specificity.