Preface to the Third Edition

The publication of this third edition has provided the opportunity to carefully scru-

tinize the entire contents and update them wherever necessary. Overview and aims,

organization and features, and target audiences remain unchanged. The main addi-

tions are in Part III (Applications), which has acquired new sections or chapters

on the seemingly ever expanding “-omics”—now metagenomics, toxicogenomics,

glycomics, lipidomics, microbiomics, and phenomics are all covered, albeit mostly

briefly. The increasing involvement of information theory with ecosystems manage-

ment, which is undoubtedly a part of biology, was felt to warrant a new chapter on

that topic. The nervous system has also been explicitly included: it is indubitably

an information processor and at the same time biological and, therefore, certainly

warrants inclusion, although consideration of the vastness of the topic and its exten-

sive coverage elsewhere has kept the corresponding chapter brief. A section on the

automation of biological research now concludes the work.

In his contribution, entitled “The domain of information theory in biology”, to

the 1956 Symposium on Information Theory in Biology, Henry Quastler remarks

(p. 188) that “every kind of structure and every kind of process has its informational

aspect and can be associated with information functions. In this sense, the domain

of information theory is universal—that is, information analysis can be applied to

absolutely anything”. This sentiment continues to pervade the present work.

The author takes this opportunity to thank all those who kindly commented on

the second edition.

January 2015

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