Toward a New Theoretical Framework for Biology

To help us understand the nature of information processing in living systems, biology needs a new theoretical framework that is amenable to computational approaches. Recent progress in cell and molecular biology has made it clear that the “central dogma” (DNA RNA protein) is an overly simplistic concept. The goals of this paper are: 1) to specify which aspects of the central dogma are useful and valid while identifying what is missing, inaccurate or misleading, and 2) to suggest a strategy for designing computational approaches that consider the hierarchical organization of living systems and that place the central dogma in the context of living cells.