PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Rodrick Wallace
TI  - Metabolic free energy and deterministic-but-for-error biological codes: a ‘Data Rate Theorem’ aging model
AID  - 10.1101/003384
DP  - 2014 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 003384
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/03/17/003384.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/03/17/003384.full
AB  - The living state is cognitive at every scale and level of organization. Since it is possible to associate a broad class of cognitive processes with ‘dual’ information sources, many pathologies can be addressed using statistical models based on the Shannon Coding, the Shannon-McMillan Source Coding, the Rate Distortion, and the Data Rate Theorems, as these provide powerful necessary condition constraints on all information generation and exchange, and on system control. Deterministic-but-for-error codes, although they may be fruitfully studied using information theoretic methods, do not fall so easily within these models. Such codes do not invoke cognition, although they may become essential subcomponents within larger cognitive processes. A formal argument, however, places code stability within a recognizably similar framework, with metabolic free energy serving as a ‘control signal’ stabilizing efficient operation of complex biochemical coding machinery. Demand beyond available energy supply then expresses itself in punctuated destabilization of the coding channel, affecting gene expression, protein folding, or the operation of the glycan/lectin cell interface. Aging, normal or prematurely driven by psychosocial or environmental stressors, would be expected to eventually interfere with routine code operation, triggering onset of many chronic diseases usually associated with senescence that involve failures of these mechanisms. Amyloid fibril formation is reviewed from this perspective.