What is biological information?
Biological information is a well-defined concept. It denotes the specific amino acid sequence of a protein that corresponds to a specific base sequence in DNA. This concept can be represented simply as: Biological information = amino acid sequence = DNA sequence x the genetic code, where 3 specific bases = 1 specific amino acid. This simple definition of biological information is the core principle at the foundation of modern molecular biology since Francis Crick introduced it in his seminal paper “On Protein Synthesis” published in 1958 1 . In a subsection appropriately titled " The essence of the problem ”, Crick lays out the definition of biological information: “ By information I mean the specification of the amino acid sequence of the protein”. He called this the Sequence Hypothesis which states “ that the specificity of a piece of nucleic acid is expressed solely by the sequence of its bases, and that this sequence is a (simple) code for ...