Abstract In this paper we are thinking, in a free way, about possible applications of the Information-Thermodynamics point of view in biology1.
We can consider a principle loss of information (structure) within the process of generation of cells by their duplication (dividing). Within any duplication of a cell (the predecessor) its follower is generated and the distortion of the duplicated (copied) structure (information) of the parent cell in the follower arises. This loss is measurable by the quantity of (average) information amount. It is a loss of part of message being copied (transferred), it is a loss of information within this process of such an information transfer. (The whole structure of the cell is a message, also including ’a program’ for its functionality in a texture.) This mechanism of aging by a ’tooth of time’ can be described in a functional way by the ’carnotized’ model of information transfer – direct Carnot Cycle viewed informationally. The growth of thermodynamic entropy in its environment is similar to the mentioned loss of the cell structure, measured, in biology, by the shortenning the length of the cell telomere. The telomere is, approximatelly, a box of chromozomes and its length codes the age of the cell, or, the number of the cell’s predecessors in the normal situation.
Within the pathological proliferation of cells the opposite situation arises. In this case the cells with a precise structure (but, of an another type in comparison with the normal structure of its own original and ’normal’ type) are generated. But, this grow of structure in a certain locality in the whole organism is paid by a pumping off energy from an environment of this locality. This situation is describable again by our Information-Thermodynamic model, but by a reverse this time. The decreasing value of thermodynamic entropy or increasing value of information entropy is now evidenced locally with the higher growth of the thermodynamic entropy in the environment. This process is similar to the growth of the cell structure in the pathological case which growth is now measured by the lengthening of the cell telomeres.
Keywords: Carnot Cycle, Heat entropy, Transfer channel, Information entropy, Transinformation, Telomere.