Genetics and Entropy: Turning our gaze toward the thermodynamics of biological systems

Alexandra V. Freire M.1
Show Affiliation

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37980/im.journal.ggcl.en.20252757

Keywords:

entropy, hermodynamics, dissipative structures, DNA, cancer

Abstract

A particular physical magnitude governs our existence in an unsuspected way: entropy, formulated from the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This review seeks to move beyond its traditional conception as an abstract notion of physics and to present it as a fundamental key to understanding how we arise, organize, and ultimately fade away. Entropy is examined from a biological and genetic perspective, drawing on rigorous scientific literature, both contemporary and classical, for its conceptual foundation. We explore how biological systems do not challenge the laws of physics but rather exploit them to sustain life, maintaining internal order at the expense of exporting entropy to the environment. The contributions of Schrödinger, Prigogine, and Lehninger are revisited to describe organisms as self-replicating dissipative structures capable of persisting through the extraction of negative entropy from their surroundings. In addition, the work of contemporary physicists such as Carroll and Greene is used to examine the intricate relationship between evolution and entropy. The informational dimension of entropy is also addressed through DNA, understood not only as a molecule but as a biological language. Finally, cancer and aging are explored as divergent pathways of a shared entropic principle. From the perspective of genetics and biology, life can be understood as a precise choreography of energy and information, whose progressive dissipation threatens the very continuity of existence.

Full Content not available at this moment. (Status: 2757)

References

[1] Pierce, S.E. (2002). Non-equilibrium thermodynamics: An alternate evolutionary hypothesis. Crossing Boundaries. 1. 49-59

[2] Gherab-Martín, K. (2023). Erwin Schrödinger: física, biología y la explicación del mecanismo de la vida. TECHNO Review, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.37467/revtechno.v13.5143

[3] Ho, M. W. (1994). What is (Schrödinger’s) negentropy? Modern Trends in BioThermoKinetics, 3(1994), 50-61.

[4] Simões, R. P., Wolf, I. R., Correa, B. A., & Valente, G. T. (2021). Uncovering patterns of the evolution of genomic sequence entropy and complexity. Molecular genetics and genomics: MGG, 296(2), 289–298. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-020-01729-y

[5] Greene, B. (2011). The hidden reality: Parallel universes and the deep laws of the cosmos. Vintage Books. ISBN: 978-0307278128

[6] Devine S. D. (2016). Understanding how replication processes can maintain systems away from equilibrium using Algorithmic Information Theory. Bio Systems, 140, 8–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystems.2015.11.008

[7] Isa, H., & Dumas, C. (2020). Entropy and Negentropy Principles in the I-Theory. Journal of High Energy Physics, Gravitation and Cosmology, 6, 259–273. https://doi.org/10.4236/jhepgc.2020.62020

[8] Kolchinsky A. (2025). Thermodynamics of Darwinian selection in molecular replicators. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 380(1936), 20240436. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0436

[9] Adamski, P., Eleveld, M., Sood, A., & others. (2020). From self-replication to replicator systems en route to de novo life. Nature Reviews Chemistry, 4, 386–403. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41570-020-0196-x

[10] Schrödinger, E. (1944). What is life? The physical aspect of the living cell. Cambridge University Press. Online ISSN: 1538-7445

[11] Trapp, O. (2021). First steps towards molecular evolution. In A. Neubeck & S. McMahon (Eds.), Prebiotic chemistry and the origin of life. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81039-9_7

[12] Barbacci, A., Magnenet, V., & Lahaye, M. (2015). Thermodynamical journey in plant biology. Frontiers in Plant Science, 6, 481. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2015.00481

[13] Baez, J. C., & Pollard, B. S. (2016). Relative Entropy in Biological Systems. Entropy, 18(2), 46. https://doi.org/10.3390/e18020046

[14] Yazdani, S. (2019) Informational Entropy as a Source of Life’s Origin. Journal of Modern Physics, 10, 1498-1504. https://doi.org/10.4236/jmp.2019.1013099

[15] Greene, B. (2020). Until the end of time: Mind, matter, and our search for meaning in an evolving universe. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN:‎ 978-0525432173

[16] Sánchez, F., & Battaner, E. (2022). An Astrophysical Perspective of Life. The Growth of Complexity. Revista mexicana de astronomía y astrofísica, 58(2), 375-385. https://doi.org/10.22201/ia.01851101p.2022.58.02.16

[17] Cohen, I. R., & Marron, A. (2020). The evolution of universal adaptations of life is driven by universal properties of matter: energy, entropy, and interaction. F1000Research, 9, 626. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.24447.3

[18] Lehninger, A. L., Nelson, D. L., & Cox, M. M. (2000). Lehninger principles of biochemistry (3rd ed.). Worth Publishers. ISBN: 9783662082904

[19] Wu, W., & Liu, Y. (2010). Radiation entropy flux and entropy production of the Earth system. Reviews of Geophysics, 48, RG2003. https://doi.org/10.1029/2008RG000275

[20] Prigogine, I. (1977). Self-organization in nonequilibrium systems: From dissipative structures to order through fluctuations (G. Nicolis & I. Prigogine, Eds.). Wiley. ISBN: 978-0471024019

[21] Crecraft H. (2023). Dissipation + Utilization = Self-Organization. Entropy (Basel, Switzerland), 25(2), 229. https://doi.org/10.3390/e25020229

[22] Cushman S. A. (2023). Editorial: The role of entropy and information in evolution. Frontiers in genetics, 14, 1269792. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2023.1269792

[23] Brooks, D. R., Collier, J., Maurer, B. A., Smith, J. D. H., & Wiley, E. O. (1989). Entropy and information in evolving biological systems. Biology & Philosophy, 4(4), 407–432. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00162588

[24] Schmitt, A. O., & Herzel, H. (1997). Estimating the entropy of DNA sequences. Journal of theoretical biology, 188(3), 369–377. https://doi.org/10.1006/jtbi.1997.0493

[25] Sherwin, W. B. (2018). Entropy, or Information, Unifies Ecology and Evolution and Beyond. Entropy, 20(10), 727. https://doi.org/10.3390/e20100727

[26] Prigogine, I. (1977). Time, structure and fluctuations [Nobel Lecture]. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB.

[27] Mendoza Montano, C. (2025). Toward a thermodynamic theory of evolution: A theoretical perspective on information entropy reduction and the emergence of complexity. Frontiers in Complex Systems, 3, 1630050. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcpxs.2025.1630050

[28] Carroll, S. M. (2010). From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time. Dutton. ISBN: 978-0452296541

[29] Seely A. J. E. (2020). Optimizing Our Patients' Entropy Production as Therapy? Hypotheses Originating from the Physics of Physiology. Entropy (Basel, Switzerland), 22(10), 1095. https://doi.org/10.3390/e22101095

[30] Price, M. E. (2017). Entropy and selection: Life as an adaptation for universe replication. Complexity, 2017, Article 4745379. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/4745379

[31] Zhang, B., & Gladyshev, V. N. (2020). How can aging be reversed? Exploring rejuvenation from a damage-based perspective. Advanced genetics (Hoboken, N.J.), 1(1), e10025. https://doi.org/10.1002/ggn2.10025

[32] Koslicki, D. (2011). Topological entropy of DNA sequences. Bioinformatics, 27(8), 1061–1067. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btr077

[33] Mazaheri, P., Shirazi, A. H., Saeedi, N., Reza Jafari, G., & Sahimi, M. (2010). Differentiating the protein coding and noncoding RNA segments of DNA using shannon entropy. International Journal of Modern Physics C, 21(1), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1142/S0129183110014975

[34] Natal, J., Ávila, I., Tsukahara, V. B., Pinheiro, M., & Maciel, C. D. (2021). Entropy: From thermodynamics to information processing. Entropy, 23(10), 1340. https://doi.org/10.3390/e23101340

[35] Takens, F. (2010). Reconstruction theory and nonlinear time series analysis. In H. W. Broer, F. Takens, & B. Hasselblatt (Eds.), Handbook of dynamical systems (Vol. 3, pp. 345–377). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1874-575X(10)00315-2

[36] Thanos, D., Li, W., & Provata, A. (2018). Entropic fluctuations in DNA sequences. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and Its Applications, 493, 444–454. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2017.11.119

[37] Huo, Z., Martinez-Garcia, M., Zhang, Y., Yan, R., & Shu, L. (2020). Entropy Measures in Machine Fault Diagnosis: Insights and Applications. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 69(6), 2607-2620. Article 9037369. https://doi.org/10.1109/TIM.2020.2981220

[38] Thomas, D., Finan, C., Newport, M. J., & Jones, S. (2015). DNA entropy reveals a significant difference in complexity between housekeeping and tissue specific gene promoters. Computational biology and chemistry, 58, 19–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiolchem.2015.05.001

[39] Tarabichi, M., Antoniou, A., Saiselet, M., Pita, J. M., Andry, G., Dumont, J. E., Detours, V., & Maenhaut, C. (2013). Systems biology of cancer: entropy, disorder, and selection-driven evolution to independence, invasion and "swarm intelligence". Cancer metastasis reviews, 32(3-4), 403–421. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10555-013-9431-y

[40] Gryder, B. E., Nelson, C. W., & Shepard, S. S. (2013). Biosemiotic Entropy of the Genome: Mutations and Epigenetic Imbalances Resulting in Cancer. Entropy, 15(1), 234-261. https://doi.org/10.3390/e15010234

[41] Nijman S. M. B. (2020). Perturbation-Driven Entropy as a Source of Cancer Cell Heterogeneity. Trends in cancer, 6(6), 454–461. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trecan.2020.02.016

[42] Francescangeli, F., De Angelis, M. L., Rossi, R., Cuccu, A., Giuliani, A., De Maria, R., & Zeuner, A. (2023). Dormancy, stemness, and therapy resistance: Interconnected players in cancer evolution. Cancer Metastasis Reviews, 42(1), 197–215. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10555-023-10092-4

[43] Greene, B. (2010). The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN: 978-0393338102

×