Exploring Mutations, Fitness, and Information in Evolutionary Biology

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Mutations in organisms act as measurements of the environment, with beneficial mutations being adjustments to thrive in specific conditions while deleterious mutations reduce fitness and are eliminated. This continuous process of mutation leads to an increase in information within an organism over time, forming the law of increasing information in evolution. While the natural selection process generally increases information, environmental changes or factors like recombination can lead to a loss of information. Complexity in organisms is directly related to the amount of information they contain, as complexity is essentially useful and intricate information. Therefore, the complexity in evolution increases with time, reflecting the increasing information within organisms driven by the natural selection process.

Evolution is sometimes described -- not precisely, but with some justification -- as being about the "survival of the fittest." But that idea doesn't work unless there is some way for one generation to pass down information about how best to survive. We now know that such information is passed down in a variety of ways: through our inherited genome, through epigenetic factors, and of course through cultural transmission. Chris Adami suggests that we update Dobzhansky's maxim "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" to "... except in the light of information." We talk about information theory as a subject in its own right, and how it helps us to understand organisms, evolution, and the origin of life.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/02/19/266-christoph-adami-on-how-information-makes-sense-of-biology/

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Christoph Adami received his Ph.D. in physics from Stony Brook University. He is currently professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics as well as Physics and Astronomy at Michigan State University. Among his awards are the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Artificial Life. His new book is The Evolution of Biological Information: How Evolution Creates Complexity, from Viruses to Brains.

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