ISMB99
The Origin of Biological Information
Manfred Eigen
Max-Planck-lnstitut für biophysikalische
Chemie
D-37077 Göttingen,
Germany,
What is the distinguishing feature of a living system that singularizes
it from every non-living chemical ensemble. regardless of the
extent of the complexity. The differentiable characteristic of
the living system is information. Information assures the controlled
reproduction of all the constituents thereby ensuring the conservation
of viability. Information - unlike energy - is not subject to
a conservation law. Hence the fundamental question behind the
origin of life is: How can information originate?
Information theory, which was pioneered by Claude Shannon, cannot
answer this question this theory is most successful in dealing
with problems of coding and transmission. In principle, the answer
was formulated 130 years ago by Charles Darwin: The information
that is unique for life evolves by virtue of natural selection.
Today we can be more specific: Natural selection is a non-equilibrium
process. It is an inherent consequence of mutagenous self-replication
at several levels of organization: for instance it is evident
in molecules such as nucleic acids, in molecular complexes such
as viruses and in autonomous formes of life such as micro- or
higher organisms. New physical concepts have been introduced in
order to deal quantitatively with the dynamics of the molecular
generation of genetic information. They provide a physical foundation
for Darwinian behaviour, yet they introduce major modifications
in its interpretation. The lecture deals with these physical concepts,
such as "sequence space", "quasi-species"
and "hypercycles" and will scrutinize their adequacy
for rationalizing experimental results obtained with molecular
model systems and with viruses under natural conditions. Elucidating
the principles of molecular self-organization has made possible
to construct automated machines that make it possible for genetic
information to evolve under controlled conditions in an abridged
time scale.
References