Branko Dragovich
Institute of Physics, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
Mathematical Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade, Serbia
dragovich [at] ipb.ac.rs
Abstract
According to the modern scientific developments, the information is getting to be a fundamental notion like space, time and matter. These four fundamental concepts are substantially interconnected and represent the basic ingredients of the universe. Being fundamental, there is no complete definition of the information. According to our intuition, we distinguish between what is and what is not information. In the present contribution, I consider information as a very special state of the matter with a definite meaning which affects the evolution of the universe as a whole or its parts. Depending on complexity of the system one can speak about physical, biological and other information.
By physical information, first of all, I mean definite values of fundamental physical constants (c –the speed of light in vacuum, h – the Planck constant, and G – the universal gravitational constant). These constants are valid in every space, at every time and for every kind of matter. Physical informtion also includes basic properties of elementary particles (mass, electric charge, spin, …). Physical informaton should mean everything that was given at the beginning of the universe and does not change over time.
Biological information (bioinformation) is a very special state of the biological system, which was given at the beginning of life or became during evolution. A basic example of a biological information system is DNA, which is a special long sequence of pairs of nucleotides. A part of DNA codes proteins, while the other one should be related to the regulation functions. The DNA contains special sequences of codons to which certain sequences of amino acids correspond. The special connection between 64 codons (elements of mRNA) and 20 amino acids (building blocks of proteins) with the stop signal is known as the genetic code.
In this talk, I will speak about physical and biological information as well as about some modeling of the genetic code.