Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Chris Adami's avatar

If only someone had written a book about that subject. We wouldn't have to guess so much. A book like this one perhaps. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691241142/the-evolution-of-biological-information

Expand full comment
saarantras's avatar

I wonder if you could get an estimate of your "phenotypic Kolmogorov complexity" from gene essentiality or better yet one of those reductionist synthetic biology attempts to make a minimal cell.

Though you run into the problem of defining phenotypically identical. Proving that a genetic element is *never* useful seems impossible : maybe you simply haven't tested the condition where it is used. e.g. lab strains of S. Cerevicae commonly have genes required for sporulation knocked out, but you'd never conclude they were necessary (or "informative") unless you deprived them of nutrients : then you'd see that the wild-type made spores, and the mutants did not. As the old saw goes : "The knockout mouse has no phenotype", "Well, did you take it to the opera?" (implication is that the phenotype may only be observable under opera conditions). So maybe the information figure would be contingent on a "reasonable" phenotyping panel?

Also a minor nitpick: there is X-Y crossing-over on the PARs, I believe.

Expand full comment
10 more comments...

No posts