In the Beginning was Information

into the organism, serving as building materials, reserves, bearersof energy, and working and transport substances. They are thebasic substances comprising the material parts of living organismsand they include such important compounds as enzymes, anti-bodies,blood pigments, and hormones. Every organ and every kind oflife has its own specific proteins and there are about 50,000 differentproteins in the human body, each of which performs importantfunctions. Their structure as well as the relevant “chemical factories”in the cells have to be encoded in such a way that protein synthesiscan proceed optimally, combining the correct quantities ofthe required substances.The structural formulas of the 20 different amino acids whichserve as chemical building blocks for the proteins found in all livingbeings, appear in the book “In sechs Tagen vom Chaos zum Menschen”[G10, p 143]. If a certain specific protein must be manufacturedin a cell, then the chemical formula must be communicatedto the cell as well as the chemical procedures for its synthesis.The exact sequence of the individual building blocks isextremely important for living organisms, so that the instructionsmust be in written form. This requires a coding system as well asthe necessary equipment which can decode the information andcarry out the instructions for the synthesis. The minimal requirementsare:– According to Theorem 6 a coding system is required for compilinginformation, and this system should be able to identifyuniquely all the relevant amino acids by means of a standard setof symbols which must remain constant.– As required by Theorems 14, 17, and 19 for any piece of information,this information should involve precisely definedsemantics, pragmatics, and apobetics.– There must be a physical carrier able to store all the requiredinformation in the smallest possible space, according to Theorem24.The names of the 20 amino acids occurring in living beings andtheir internationally accepted three-letter abbreviations, are listedin Figure 16 (e. g. Ala for alanin). It is noteworthy that exactly this89