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dc.contributor.authorThorvaldsen, Steinar
dc.contributor.authorØhrstrøm, Peter
dc.contributor.authorHössjer, Ola
dc.date.accessioned2024-10-01T10:36:45Z
dc.date.available2024-10-01T10:36:45Z
dc.date.issued2024-06-27
dc.description.abstractCurrent 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.en_US
dc.identifier.citationThorvaldsen, Øhrstrøm, Hössjer. The representation, quantification, and nature of genetic information. Synthese. 2024en_US
dc.identifier.cristinIDFRIDAID 2279884
dc.identifier.doi10.1007/s11229-024-04613-z
dc.identifier.issn0039-7857
dc.identifier.issn1573-0964
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10037/34940
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherSpringer Natureen_US
dc.relation.journalSynthese
dc.rights.accessRightsopenAccessen_US
dc.rights.holderCopyright 2024 The Author(s)en_US
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0en_US
dc.rightsAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)en_US
dc.titleThe representation, quantification, and nature of genetic informationen_US
dc.type.versionpublishedVersionen_US
dc.typeJournal articleen_US
dc.typeTidsskriftartikkelen_US
dc.typePeer revieweden_US


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Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Med mindre det står noe annet, er denne innførselens lisens beskrevet som Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)