Information Theory in Biology: Past and Recent Results

There have been many attempts at applying ideas and methods from Information Theory in the biosciences, ever since Shannon first laid out the his theory of communication in engineering, to most recent times in an accelerated swing. Much of this has concerned modeling bio-communication, evolutionary processes in uncertain conditions, learning mechanisms in organisms and new approaches of analysis of high-throughput genetic data. This talk will be an informal review of both the very early reactions by biologists and some of the more recent interesting and sometimes controversial claims and results.