Biology:The Bit Pair-Centered View of Evolution

The bit pair (two binary digits) is the canonical unit of selection in evolution.

By Andrew William Morrow

It is implemented as a base pair in the DNA molecule. In essence, it is the fittest bit pairs of information that struggle to survive.

It may be useful to think, in a sense, of each bit-pair as a complex organism with some mental facilities, struggling to survive. Darwin thought in terms of organisms when he coined "survival of the fittest" and heritable traits, and this part of his older work can be preserved and applied to all three points of view: Darwin, Dawkins and Morrow into some sort of Grand Unified Theory of biological survival.

Format

.2bit format / packedDna

The DNA packed to two bits per base, represented as so: T – 00, C – 01, A – 10, G – 11. The first base is in the most significant 2-bit byte; the last base is in the least significant 2 bits. For example, the sequence TCAG is represented as 00011011.

A missed opportunity

In w:Richard Dawkins’ "w:gene-centered view of evolution”, he misses the opportunity to finish the task of going down to the bits. He dwells on genes and other high-order levels of architecture, synergy and such. It is, rather the bit pair that struggles for survival over the reproduction cycle time of the organism and its offspring, percolating through each cell, organism and the biospheric chessboard.

Bit pair attrition rates

The attrition rate of bit pairs is very close to unity. One bit pair replaced another when a mutation occurs during mitosis, but only during the much more rare event of meiosis and reproduction does any bit pair propagate to succeeding generations. It might shed further light on the process to compute such attrition rates for various species and environments.