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Collective computation: What makes a "good" formal language for computation in biology? Some of us @sfiscience, building on Fontana + others, believe an FL needs to take seriously the logic of biological mechanism + thermodynamic constraints. Useful background to this discussion
is provided by Kolchinsky+Wolpert @PhysRevResearch ( http://tinyurl.com/y6c9oopc ) in their study (in context of Turing machines) of how diff thermodynamic costs — (1) heat generated when a TM is run on each input, (2) min heat generated when TM is run w an input resulting in some
desired output, +(3) expected heat on an input distribution that mins entropy production — tradeoff during computation, for different, albeit abstract, nonmechanistic, physical TM realizations. The latter two costs, w respect to biological computation, perhaps relate to the
thermodynamic costs of adaptation + robustness. Interested in these q’s? Wolpert + I will soon put out a call for a special issue on biological computation that focuses on thermodynamics + the logic of biological mechanism. We’re seeking contributions on circuit design principles
