Casting Polymer Nets to Optimize Noisy Molecular Codes

Abstract

Life relies on the efficient performance of molecular codes, which relate symbols and meanings via error-prone molecular recognition. We describe how optimizing a code to withstand the impact of molecular recognition noise may be approximated by the statistics of a two-dimensional network made of polymers. The noisy code is defined by partitioning the space of symbols into regions according to their meanings. The "polymers" are the boundaries between these regions and their statistics defines the cost and the quality of the noisy code. When the parameters that control the cost-quality balance are varied, the polymer network undergoes a first-order transition, where the number of encoded meanings rises discontinuously. Effects of population dynamics on the evolution of molecular codes are discussed.

PNAS 2008

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• A colorful origin for the genetic code: Information theory, statistical mechanics and the emergence of molecular codes
• Molecular Recognition as an Information Channel: The Role of Conformational Changes
• Molecular Codes in Biological and Non-Biological Reaction Networks
• The physical language of molecular codes: A rate-distortion approach to the evolution and emergence of biological codes