Quasispecies: From Theory to Experimental Systems

Bernd-Olaf Küppers, Küppers, Bernd-Olaf

The analysis of the inherent context-dependence of genetic information suggests that there are evolutionary mechanisms which are independent of the processes of environmental adaptation and yet are able to push prebiotic matter towards functional complexity. In this regard, the extension of information space, by random prolongation of the primary structure of biological macromolecules, must have played a decisive role in the origin of life. On the one hand, the extension of information space is tantamount to an increase in the syntactic complexity of potential information carriers, which in turn is a prerequisite for the nucleation and evolution of semantic information. On the other hand, the increase in the dimensionality of information space expands the number of possible pathways of evolutionary optimisation and thereby improves the possible choices that can be made by progressive evolution. Alongside the optimisation of evolutionary optimisation itself, there are principles of evolutionary dynamics that direct the formation of functional order in prebiotic matter. Since these principles are constitutive for the proto-semantics of genetic information, they may be regarded as the elements of the semantic code of evolution.