Information compression in biological systems.
In biological systems a high coordination between their individual parts occurs. The concept of coordination can be given a rigorous mathematical basis by the concept of order parameters and the slaving principle. We calculate the information of the total system in terms of order parameters and slaved subsystems. When qualitative changes of a system happen, the information change is given by that of the order parameters alone and may amount to few bits only.
D000818:Animals; D008433:Mathematics; D008954:Models, Biological; D009132:Muscles / Q000502:physiology; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D011336:Probability