Information and the evolution of codon bias

[摘要] The informational properties of biological systems are the subject of muchdebate and research. I present a general argument in favor of the existenceand central importance of information in organisms, followed by a case studyof the genetic code (specifically, codon bias) and the translation system fromthe perspective of information. The codon biases of 831 Bacteria and Archeaeare analyzed and modeled as points in a 64-dimensional statistical space. Themajor results are that (1) codon bias evolution does not follow canonicalpatterns, and (2) the use of coding space in organsims is a subset of thetotal possible coding space. These findings imply that codon bias is a uniqueadaptive mechanism that owes its existence to organisms' use of information inrepresenting genes, and that there is a particularly biologicalcharacter to the resulting biased coding and information use.

[效力级别] Philosophy of information

[关键词] Information science;Philosophy of information;Evolution;Genetic code;Codon bias;Biological information