From the Cellular Standpoint: is DNA Sequence Genetic ‘Information’?

Abstract

Constructivist biosemiotics foundations (CBF) imply the first-person basis of cognition. CBF are developed by the biology of cognition, relational biology, enactive approach, ecology of mind, second order cybernetics, genetic epistemology, gestalt, ecological perception and affordances, and active inference by minimization of free energy. CBF reject the idea of an objective independent reality to be represented (cognitivism) by information processing (computationalism) in order to be the fittest (adaptationism). CBF assumes that perception is the behavioral configuration of an object and objects are tokens for eigen-behaviors. Cognition takes place in the organism-environment structural coupling during the ontogeny and phylogeny of all biological unities including unicellular organisms. Therefore, if exogenous DNA particles (virus or trans-sequence) are just tokens for the cell signalling eigen-behaviors, if there is no 'information' in the DNA sequence, how can we explain that the same virus or trans- sequence is associated with a similar phenotype? We call this 'exogenomic problem'. With this basic example, but sufficiently generic to the whole biological world, we agree respectively with Autopoiesis, (Metabolism, Repair)-system, and Gaia theory: i) 'Information, code and meaning' in the DNA sequence belong to the domain of the observer's description. ii) Genetic 'information' is not a program or algorithmic software in DNA sequence. Rather it is a microphysical observable mode of eigen-behaviors in biological unities. iii) The transfer and acquisition of DNA particles is a biospheric phenomenon that maintains its homeorhesis, symbiotic and biosemiotic entailment. Based on the theoretical and experimental results of these theories, it is concluded that genetic 'information' is not a genomic sequence, nor any kind of information (algorithmic or semantic), but for the cell DNA must embody physical forcing. Genetic characters are the effects and not the cause of phenotype and DNA particles do not 'use or manipulate' cellular metabolism. Rather, any cellular configuration change that occurred before or during DNA perturbation (coincident or not with the observation of certain phenotype) is determined on the basis of the cellular standpoint.

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