Information Emergence and Environmental Adaptation in Living Systems
Adam Marsh, College of Marine & Earth Studies, University of Delaware
16 Feb 2007
Organisms exist as an integrated hierarchy of systems levels, from molecular to ecological. We know that organisms are adapted to optimally survive within specific habitats, and that these adaptations are hard-coded within DNA base sequences at a molecular level. The information that exists within that genomic sequence is subsequently expressed and transmitted to higher organizational levels. But is that all the information within an organism that determines its biological activity? My research focuses on understanding how information is transferred between biological levels, and what happens to the content of that information as it transits from molecular expression to ecological effect.