Excerpt

Introduction

Information processing, or computation in a general sense, is a defining feature of living systems at all spatial and temporal scales. In a fundamental sense, all the structure and functioning of living systems is governed by genetic information that needs to be processed and executed at molecular, cellular, and organismal scales. Biological systems individually process information to maintain an inner homeostatic equilibrium and to respond to environmental clues and stimuli with often highly complex and coordinated behaviors. On the most complex scale, human culture, the evolutionary product of one biological species, has developed a whole “information economy.” All these examples raise the question: how and what does a biological system compute?

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