This brings up a question I have yet to get answered: What exactly are you measuring when you measure "information" WRT our bodies? The length of the genome, the number of genes, the number of proteins, or what? Here's an example of an increased number of coding sequences (the gene + later the disabling RNAi snippet) that cause a decrease in the number of proteins created.
Or looked at another way, you have a function (the gene) that previously would be activated when (A [the promoter region getting triggered] == TRUE), but is now activated when (A AND B == TRUE). That's a more complex expression that's being evaluated, but it would == TRUE less often than before. Is that a gain or loss of information?
Or looked at yet another way, if I start out with Snippet 1 below, and change it to Snippet 2, have I increased or decreased the information?:
// Snippet 1...
<script language="javascript">
oMsg = new String ("This is a message.");
if (oMsg != "")
{alert (oMsg);
}
// Snippet 2...
oMsg = new String ("This is a message.");
oMsg = "";
if (oMsg != "")
{alert (oMsg);
}
</script>
All those things could be used as metrics, but I don't think you could ever say one number is absolute and definitive, unless it's what you could compress a person's bitstream down to for a Star Trek transporter beam. Nucleotides of DNA in the genome, each corresponding to two binary bits, is a good rough measure, but there are a lot of caveats. For example, DNA never builds a cell or an organism by itself, so there is some information in the machinery of the cell, which isn't as easily quantifiable. OTOH, you could probably throw out much if not most of the DNA of a human being and it wouldn't make any significant difference to the development of the organism (provided you knew which bits to throw out!)
Here's an example of an increased number of coding sequences (the gene + later the disabling RNAi snippet) that cause a decrease in the number of proteins created.
Well, the use of an endogenous "siRNA" transcript to down-regulate another gene is conceptually no different from the use of a protein transcription factor to down-regulate another gene. It only really buys you something if the expression of the silencing agent -- the siRNA or transcription factor -- is conditional and regulated. If it were just cancelling out the effect of the other gene all the time, the whole thing would just represent a waste of bits, and would be lost over time, or never develop in the first place. And generally there also wouldn't be much point if the regulator has only one target, because then you just get a regress, since the target gene could just be regulated directly without the complication of the intervening regulator. But regulators are few and controlled genes are many: gene networks feature hierarchies of control, just like armies, nation-states and business corporations. One regulator controls many downstream genes, just as one foreman gives orders to several workers. These considerations hold regardless of whether we are talking about traditional protein-mediated control, or these novel siRNA-mediated mechanisms. Protein versus RNA is just a question of instrumentality, like JAVA versus C++.
All those things. Bascially, commands and data that didn't previously exist in the genome. In this case, information seems to exist but simply lay dormant.
Your code example (A [the promoter region getting triggered] == TRUE), but is now activated when (A AND B == TRUE) would indicate a programing change and an information increase. But suppose the code was written --I'm not a programmer so forgive the incorrect syntex -- as (A == TRUE) Unless RNA = Double THEN (A AND B == TRUE)?
That would not be an increase in information.