Related papers: Information processing in living systems
We consider biological individuality in terms of information theoretic and graphical principles. Our purpose is to extract through an algorithmic decomposition system-environment boundaries supporting individuality. We infer or detect…
These are notes for a set of 7 two-hour lectures given at the 2010 Summer School on Quantitative Evolutionary and Comparative Genomics at OIST, Okinawa, Japan. The emphasis is on understanding how biological systems process information. We…
In this paper, we wish to investigate the dynamics of information transfer in evolutionary dynamics. We use information theoretic tools to track how much information an evolving population has obtained and managed to retain about different…
Biological systems, from a cell to the human brain, are inherently complex. A powerful representation of such systems, described by an intricate web of relationships across multiple scales, is provided by complex networks. Recently, several…
Flows are essential to transport resources over large distances. As soon as diffusion becomes time-limiting, flows are needed. Flows are key for the function of multiple human organs, from the blood vasculature to the lungs, the digestive…
For biological experiments aiming at calibrating models with unknown parameters, a good experimental design is crucial, especially for those subject to various constraints, such as financial limitations, time consumption and physical…
Information theory is gaining popularity as a tool to characterize performance of biological systems. However, information is commonly quantified without reference to whether or how a system could extract and use it; as a result,…
Information flow analysis has largely ignored the setting where the analyst has neither control over nor a complete model of the analyzed system. We formalize such limited information flow analyses and study an instance of it: detecting the…
We review three studies of information flow in social networks that help reveal their underlying social structure, how information spreads through them and why small world experiments work.
Computational intelligence is broadly defined as biologically-inspired computing. Usually, inspiration is drawn from neural systems. This article shows how to analyze neural systems using information theory to obtain constraints that help…
Signal transduction, or signal-processing capability, is a fundamental property of nature that manifests universally across systems of different scales -- from quantum behaviour to the biological. This includes the detection of…
In computer science, we can theoretically neatly separate transmission and processing of information, hardware and software, and programs and their inputs. This is much more intricate in biology, Nevertheless, I argue that Shannon's concept…
Although it has been notoriously difficult to pin down precisely what it is that makes life so distinctive and remarkable, there is general agreement that its informational aspect is one key property, perhaps the key property. The unique…
One of the defining features of living systems is their adaptability to changing environmental conditions. This requires organisms to extract temporal and spatial features of their environment, and use that information to compute the…
Living organisms are not just random collections of organic molecules. There is continuous information processing going on in the apparent bouncing around of molecules of life. Optimisation criteria in this information processing can be…
Despite the obvious advantage of simple life forms capable of fast replication, different levels of cognitive complexity have been achieved by living systems in terms of their potential to cope with environmental uncertainty. Against the…
Active biological flow networks pervade nature and span a wide range of scales, from arterial blood vessels and bronchial mucus transport in humans to bacterial flow through porous media or plasmodial shuttle streaming in slime molds.…
``The purpose of life is to obtain knowledge, use it to live with as much satisfaction as possible, and pass it on with improvements and modifications to the next generation.'' This may sound philosophical, and the interpretation of words…
Information theory is widely accepted as a powerful tool for analyzing complex systems and it has been applied in many disciplines. Recently, some central components of information theory - multivariate information measures - have found…
This paper discusses the benefits of describing the world as information, especially in the study of the evolution of life and cognition. Traditional studies encounter problems because it is difficult to describe life and cognition in terms…