Crick's notion of genetic information and the 'central dogma' of molecular biology     

Sustar  Predrag 《The British journal for the philosophy of science》2007,58(1):13-24

An assessment is offered of the recent debate on informationin the philosophy of biology, and an analysis is provided ofthe notion of information as applied in scientific practicein molecular genetics. In particular, this paper deals withthe dependence of basic generalizations of molecular biology,above all the ‘central dogma’, on the so-called‘informational talk’ (Maynard Smith [2000a]). Itis argued that talk of information in the ‘central dogma’can be reduced to causal claims. In that respect, the primaryaim of the paper is to consider a solution to the major difficultyof the causal interpretation of genetic information: how todistinguish the privileged causal role assigned to nucleic acids,DNA in particular, in the processes of replication and proteinproduction. A close reading is proposed of Francis H. C. Crick'sOn Protein Synthesis (1958) and related works, to which we owethe first explicit definition of information within the scientificpractice of molecular biology.

1. Introduction

   1.1 The basicquestions of the information debate

   1.2 Thecausal interpretation(CI) of biological informationand Crick's‘central dogma’

2. Crick's definitions of genetic information
3. The main requirementfor (CI)
4. Types of causation in molecular biology

   4.1 Structuralcausation in molecular biology

   4.2 Nucleicacids as correlativecausal factors

5. The ‘central dogma’ withoutthe notion of information
6. Concluding remarks

  相似文献