In computer science, we can theoretically neatly separate transmission and processing of information, hardware and software, and programs and their inputs. This is much more intricate in biology. Nevertheless, I argue that Shannon’s concept of information is useful in biology, although its application is not as straightforward as many people think. In fact, the recently developed theory of information decomposition can shed much light on the complementarity between coding and regulatory, or internal and environmental information. The key challenge that we formulate in this contribution is to understand how genetic information and external factors combine to create an organism, and conversely how the genome has learned in the course of evolution how to harness the environment, and analogously how coding, regulation and spatial organization interact in cellular processes.

在计算机科学中，我们可以在理论上巧妙地将信息、硬件和软件以及程序及其输入的传输和处理分开。这在生物学中要复杂得多。尽管如此，我认为香农的信息概念在生物学中是有用的，尽管它的应用并不像许多人想象的那么简单。事实上，最近发展起来的信息分解理论可以对编码和监管或内部和环境信息之间的互补性提供很多启示。我们在此贡献中提出的关键挑战是了解遗传信息和外部因素如何结合以创建有机体，以及相反地，基因组在进化过程中如何学习如何利用环境，以及类似地如何编码，