Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 8.1
The relation among
genes
,
conformons,
and
IDSs
(intracellular dissipative structures)
suggested by the music-life analogy
Music
Life
1. Agent
Pianist
Cell
2. Energy source (chemical
reactions)
Pianist's fingers
RNA polymerase
3. Information source
(equilibrium structures)
Sheet music
Nucleotide sequences (Watson-Crick genes)
4. Periodic motions
(dissipative structures)
Vibrating strings
(or phonons)
Oscillating conformations of enzymes
(or
conformons
), (Lumry-McClare
form of genes)
5. Translational motions
(dissipative structures)
Audio music
IDSs (prigoginian form of genes)
6. Evolutionary selection
acts on
Audio music
IDSs
Table 8.2
The two types of the information-energy particles (or gnergons) responsible for self-
organizing activities in the living cell and higher structures. Row 5 assumes that genes are not
static as is widely believed but dynamic, storing both information (e.g., nucleotide sequences) and
free energy (e.g., mechanical energy of supercoiled DNA). m-Dissipatons
¼
mechanical
dissipations (e.g., DNA supercoils; Sect.
8.3
); c-dissipatons
¼
concentration dissipatons (see text)
Gnergons (or dissipatons)
Conformons (or m-dissipatons)
IDSs (or c-dissipatons)
1.
Energy
stored in
Proteins, RNA, DNA (this
chapter)
Concentration gradients of ions,
small molecules (Chap.
9
)
2.
Information
stored in
Amino acid and nucleotide
sequences
Chemical structures of ions and
molecules and the space-
and time-dependent shapes
of the gradients
3. Information
transmission in
Time
(via genes, biopolymer
networks, neural networks)
Space (via intracellular ion
gradients, membrane
potentials, action potentials,
sounds)
4. Mechanism of formation Generalized Franck-Condon
mechanisms (Sect.
2.2.3
)
Triadic control mechanisms (Sect.
15.3
)
5. Sheet music analog
Coding and noncoding regions
of DNA
Coding and noncoding regions
of DNA
6. Audio music analog
(types of motions)
Mechanical waves (periodic
motions confined within
biopolymers; local)
Concentration waves
(translational motions
propagating in space; global)
genes) transmit information in space (see Row 3 in Table
8.2
). Row 6 in Table
8.1
indicates that, just as music lovers choose their favorite songs through audio music
(and rarely through sheet music),
so organisms are selected by evolution through
their IDSs
(i.e., the Prigoginian form of genes), and not through their nucleotide
sequences (i.e., the Watson-Crick form of genes). This claim is in good agreement
with the “phenotype first” postulate of evolution expressed by Waddington (1957)
and others, including Kirschner and Gerhart (1998, 2005), West-Eberhard (1998),
Jablonka (2006), and others.
