A genetic mutation is a change to a gene’s DNA sequence to produce something different. It creates a permanent change to that gene’s DNA sequence. A university of Portsmouth research team has found a potential way to predict genetic mutation before they occur. The researchers have found a new physics law that could allow for the early prediction of genetic mutation. The study discovers that the second law of information dynamics behaves differently from second law of thermodynamics. The finding might have major implications for how genomic research, evolutionary biology, computing, big data, physics, and cosmology develop in the future.
Lead Author Dr. Melvin from University’s school of Mathematics and Physics states, ” In physics there are laws that govern everything that happens in the Universe. One of the most powerful laws is the second law of thermodynamics which establishes that entropy- a measure of disorder in an isolated system- can only increase of stay the same but will never decrease.” Entropy only stays constant or increases over time even when the molecules collide with one another.
Dr. Vopson an information physicist says, ” If the second law of thermodynamics states entropy needs to stay constant over time, I thought that perhaps information entropy would be the same. But what Dr. Lepadatu and I found was exact opposite – it decreases over time. The second law of thermodynamics works exactly in opposition to the second law of thermodynamics.” According to Dr. Vopson, this could be the cause of biological organisms’ genetic mutations.
Dr. Vopson added ” The worldwide consensus is that mutation takes place at random and then natural selection dictates whether mutation is good or bad for an organism. If mutation is beneficial for an organism, it is better to keep. But there is a hidden process that drives mutation. If we can look at the genetic mutation from a deterministic point of view we can exploit this new physics law to predict mutations- before they take place.”
If the mutation is predicted it can be game changing technology which can be used in genetic therapies , the pharmaceutical industry, evolutionary biology, and pandemic research.