🚀 go-pugleaf

(Sorry, I missed the original poster's article & now it seems to be Gone.)

In article <b86268d4.0112201150.52a5833e@posting.google.com>,
Matt Jones <jonesmat@physiology.wisc.edu> wrote:
>swarat_c@lycos.com (Swarat Chaudhuri) wrote in message news:<51c62199.0112171741.565cea72@posting.google.com>...

>> Has there been any effort to mathematically describe the minimum  
>> information content of a DNA string? For instance, in the lines of 
>> Kolmogorov complexity? Note that DNA strings are not completely
>> random:
>> there is a certain amount of structure.

Well, yes, but you might have guessed this from the fact that you and
every other DNA-based organism exists ;).

>>Chaitin's 1977 article on 
>> algorithmic information theory points to some possible (IMHO, 
>> rather ambitious) directions in which information theory may be
>> applied to
>> biological systems. He talks about giving a quantitative
>> characterization
>> of the structural information contained in a living organism. 

I'd suggest looking up Chris Adami's book (_Intro to Artificial Life_)
and any articles he's published on information theory recently.  You
could also contact him directly by going to his Web site

	http://www.krl.caltech.edu/~adami/

cheers,
--titus