Biological efficiency in processing information

TL;DR

This paper explores how biological systems process information efficiently across different scales, linking signal transduction to energy use and heat production to understand biological computation.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for modeling information flow in biological systems to evaluate their processing efficiency and energy consumption.

Findings

Biological systems universally process information across scales.

Efficiency can be estimated by energy and heat measurements.

Modeling information flow predicts system behavior and efficiency.

Abstract

Signal transduction, or signal-processing capability, is a fundamental property of nature that manifests universally across systems of different scales -- from quantum behaviour to the biological. This includes the detection of environmental cues, particularly relevant to behaviours of both quantum systems and green plants, where there is neither an agent purposely transmitting the signal nor a purposefully built communication channel. To characterise the dynamical behaviours of such systems driven by signal detection followed by transduction, and thus to predict future statistics, it suffices to model the flow of information. This, in turn, provides estimates for the quantity of information processed by the system. The efficiency of biological computation can then be inferred by measuring energy consumption and subsequent heat production.