A framework for parsing heritable information

TL;DR

This paper introduces a comprehensive framework for understanding heredity and development by analyzing entities, sensors, and properties that encode heritable information beyond just gene sequences, emphasizing the complexity of molecular configurations and sensing.

Contribution

It develops a novel Entity-Sensor-Property framework that explains how molecular configurations and sensing mechanisms encode heritable information and influence development.

Findings

Sensors limit the number of distinguishable states

Molecular configurations can be functionally equivalent

Sensor regulation prevents detection of certain perturbations

Abstract

Living systems transmit heritable information using the replicating gene sequences and the cycling regulators assembled around gene sequences. Here I develop a framework for heredity and development that includes the cycling regulators parsed in terms of what an organism can sense about itself and its environment by defining entities, their sensors, and the sensed properties. Entities include small molecules (ATP, ions, metabolites, etc.), macromolecules (individual proteins, RNAs, polysaccharides, etc.), and assemblies of molecules. While concentration may be the only relevant property measured by sensors for small molecules, multiple properties that include concentration, sequence, conformation, and modification may all be measured for macromolecules and assemblies. Each configuration of these entities and sensors that is recreated in successive generations in a given environment thus specifies a potentially vast amount of information driving complex development in each generation. This Entity-Sensor-Property framework explains how sensors limit the number of distinguishable states, how distinct molecular configurations can be functionally equivalent, and how regulation of sensors prevents detection of some perturbations. Overall, this framework is a useful guide for understanding how life evolves and how the storage of information has itself evolved with complexity since before the origin of life.