The representation, quantification, and nature of genetic information.
Current genetics studies often refer to notions from information science. The purpose of this paper is to summarize and structure the different notions of information used in biology, as a step towards developing a taxonomy of information. Within this framework we propose an extension of Floridi’s c...
| Publicado en: | Synthese Vol. 204; no. 1; pp. 1 - 39 |
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| Autores principales: | , , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Springer Nature
Jul2024
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=178143363&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 178143363 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00397857 4LI jtl: Synthese issn: 00397857 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jul2024 vid: 204 iid: 1 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 178143363 10.1007/s11229-024-04613-z ppf: 1 ppct: 38 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 812KB tig: atl: The representation, quantification, and nature of genetic information. aug: au: Thorvaldsen, Steinar Øhrstrøm, Peter Hössjer, Ola affil: https://ror.org/00wge5k78 Department of Education, Division of Science, UiT the Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway https://ror.org/04m5j1k67 Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark https://ror.org/05f0yaq80 Department of Mathematics, Division of Mathematical Statistics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden sug: keyword: Algorithms Floridi Functional information Instructional information Natural information Self-information Specified information ab: Current genetics studies often refer to notions from information science. The purpose of this paper is to summarize and structure the different notions of information used in biology, as a step towards developing a taxonomy of information. Within this framework we propose an extension of Floridi’s conceptual model of information. We also make use of the concept of specified information and show that functional information and many other notions of information are either special cases of, or are closely related to, specified information. Since functionality of the proteins that genes code serves as an external and independent specification, this makes it possible to define genetic information in a way that includes semantic aspects. In particular, we discuss how to understand the qualitative aspects of genetic information, how to measure its quantitative aspects, and how variants of Shannon’s information measure can be applied to molecular sequence data of protein families. While a mathematical framework may not be able to incorporate all that is included within biological information, some aspects of it allow for statistical modelling. This is especially true if we restrict our focus on the discipline of genetics. The concept of genetic information is still disputed because it attributes semantic traits to what seems to be regular biochemical entities. Some researchers maintain that the use of information in biology is just metaphorical and may even be misleading. We argue that the foundation of the metaphorical view is relatively weak given the current findings in bioinformatics and show that the present understanding of genetics fits well into the context of the modern philosophy of information. The paper concludes that informational concepts have robust scientific applications at the level of genes. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Synthese is a copyright of Springer, 2024. All Rights Reserved. item: Synthese holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2024 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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