Bionformation: untangling the networks of life

The growth of numerous subdisciplines at the interface between biology and computer science paves the way for reconsidering the special relationship between information and life. In this sense, the term ‘bioinformation’ appears as an integrative notion that is useful to promote a new understanding of the heterogeneous networkings that characterize life. Two conceptual avenues are explored here: representation and symmetry. It is argued that the special organization of the living cell, based on the overlapping of both sequential and ‘amorphous’ architectures, endlessly strives to fill in the occurring ‘functional voids’ or symmetry breakings; and it endlessly produces physiological networkings and evolutionary novelties as a byproduct. Characterizing the special dynamics inherent in the living cell may be a precondition for understanding the information–production processes on which other emergent informational entities are based, particularly, nervous systems and societies.