Simon Berkovich

Department of CS

The George Washington University

Washington, DC 20052

Complications in fundamental biology reflect the fact that information associated with Life and Mind overwhelms the diversification of the material world. As neural circuitry of the brain cannot match the performance of human memory and information contained in the genome is insufficient for organism development the source of biological control from the standpoint of computer engineering methodology remains obscure. A comprehensive theory of Nature may contemplate extracorporeal organization of biological information processing featuring organism as a "network computer" on the "Internet" of the physical Universe. Organization of biological information activities beyond the material world is associated with the mechanism of quantum nonlocality. Yet this organization raises a particular concern how zillions of biological objects avoid information interference. In this work, it is suggested that the genome information plays a role of a "barcode". The DNA structure presents a pseudo-random number (PRN) with classification tags, so organisms are characterized by DNA as library books are characterized by catalogue numbers. Thanks to the PRNs provided by DNA, biological objects can share the information processing resources of the infrastructure of the physical world in the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) mode, similarly to cellular phone communications. Several experiments supporting the concept of extracorporeal organization of biological information processing will be discussed.

Popular exposition of these ideas can be found at:

http://www.aps.org/meet/CENT99/vpr/laybc31-02.html and

http://www.aps.org/apsnews/0699/069905.html

Simon Berkovich received an MS degree in Applied Physics from Moscow Physical Technical Institute (1960) and a PhD in Computer Science from the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Technology of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1964). His major area of research is information retrieval, computer organization, and mathematical modeling. Presently, he is a Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at the George Washington University.