English

DNA coding and G\"odel numbering

Other Quantitative Biology 2019-10-01 v1

Abstract

Evolution consists of distinct stages: cosmological, biological, linguistic. Since biology verges on natural sciences and linguistics, we expect that it shares structures and features from both forms of knowledge. Indeed, in DNA we encounter the biological "atoms", the four nucleotide molecules. At the same time these four nucleotides may be considered as the "letters" of an alphabet. These four "letters", through a genetic code, generate biological "words", "phrases", "sentences" (aminoacids, proteins, cells, living organisms). In this spirit we may consider equally well a DNA strand as a mathematical statement. Inspired by the work of Kurt G\"odel, we attach to each DNA strand a G\"odel's number, a product of prime numbers raised to appropriate powers. To each DNA chain corresponds a single G\"odel's number GG, and inversely given a G\"odel's number GG, we can specify the DNA chain it stands for. Next, considering a single DNA strand composed of NN bases, we study the statistical distribution of gg, the logarithm of GG. Our assumption is that the choice of the mm-th term is random and with equal probability for the four possible outcomes. The "experiment", to some extent, appears as throwing NN times a four-faces die. Through the moment generating function we obtain the discrete and then the continuum distribution of gg. There is an excellent agreement between our formalism and simulated data. At the end we compare our formalism to actual data, to specify the presence of traces of non-random dynamics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1909.13574,
  title  = {DNA coding and G\"odel numbering},
  author = {Argyris Nicolaidis and Fotis Psomopoulos},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.13574},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

11 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T11:29:59.923Z