“Unlimited Possibilities” – New Law of Physics Could Predict Genetic Mutations

Genetic Sequencing Concept

The researchers believe that they can exploit this new physics law and find the probability of mutations before they take place.

A University of Portsmouth research team has found a potential way to predict genetic mutations before they occur.

According to a University of Portsmouth study, a new physics law could allow for the early prediction of genetic mutations.

The study discovers that the second law of information dynamics, or “infodynamics,” behaves differently from the second law of thermodynamics. This 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 Vopson is from the University’s School of Mathematics and Physics. He states “In physics, there are laws that govern everything that happens in the universe, for example how objects move, how energy flows, and so on. Everything is based on the laws of physics. 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 or stay the same, but it will never decrease.”

This is an undisputed law relating to the arrow of time, which demonstrates that time only moves in one direction. It can only flow in one direction and cannot travel backward.

He explains, “Imagine two transparent glass boxes. In the left side, you have red gas molecules, which you can see, like red smoke. In the right side, you have blue smoke, and in between them is a barrier. If you remove the barrier, the two gases will start mixing and the color will change. There is no process that this system can undergo to separate by itself blue and red again. In other words, you cannot lower the entropy or organize the system to how it was before without energy expense, because the entropy only stays constant or increases over time.”

Dr. Vopson is an information physicist. His research focuses on information systems, which can range from a laptop’s hard drive to the DNA and RNA found in living organisms. He partnered with Dr. Serban Lepadatu from the University of Central Lancashire to write this paper.

Dr. Vopson adds, “If the second law of thermodynamics states that entropy needs to stay constant or increase over time, I thought that perhaps information entropy would be the same. But what Dr. Lepadatu and I found was the exact opposite – it decreases over time. The second law of information dynamics works exactly in opposition to the second law of thermodynamics.”

According to Dr. Vopson, this could be the cause of biological organisms’ genetic mutations.

“The worldwide consensus is that mutations take place at random and then natural selection dictates whether the mutation is good or bad for an organism”, he explained. If the mutation is beneficial for an organism, it will be kept. But what if there is a hidden process that drives these mutations? Every time we see something we don’t understand, we describe it as ‘random’ or ‘chaotic’ or ‘paranormal’, but it’s only our inability to explain it. If we can start looking at genetic mutations from a deterministic point of view, we can exploit this new physics law to predict mutations – or the probability of mutations – before they take place.”

Dr. Vopson and colleagues analyzed Covid-19 (Sars-CoV-2) genomes and discovered that their information entropy reduced with time: “The best example of something that undergoes a number of mutations in a short space of time is a virus. The pandemic has given us the ideal test sample as Sars-CoV-2 mutated into so many variants and the data available is unbelievable.”

He continues, “The Covid data confirms the second law of infodynamics and the research opens up unlimited possibilities. Imagine looking at a particular genome and judging whether a mutation is beneficial before it happens. This could be game-changing technology which could be used in genetic therapies, the pharmaceutical industry, evolutionary biology, and pandemic research.”

Reference: “Second law of information dynamics” by Melvin M. Vopson and S. Lepadatu, 11 July 2022, AIP Advances.
DOI: 10.1063/5.0100358

9 Comments on "“Unlimited Possibilities” – New Law of Physics Could Predict Genetic Mutations"

  1. Wow apparently the authors of the original paper have no idea what mutation or DNA or ransomness are. I am sad that people are actually paid to do such silly so called research.

  2. Huh? I must be missing something here. I am sure that a great many mutations have happened in the genome of the coronavirus, and that the vast majority of them have been deleterious to the fitness of the virus. Sure, you could look at all the mutations deterministically and perhaps find some of the environmental triggers of the mutations, deleterious or beneficial, that have occurred. But these determinations are not teleological. Darwin was right, and Lamarck was wrong. Any mutations that have arisen in the coronavirus didn’t happen so that future generations of the virus would be fitter. Otherwise, deleterious mutations wouldn’t vastly outnumber beneficial ones. Biology 101. Or am I missing some profound point here?

  3. He said paranormal. Pack this quack up and ship him to the funny farm.

  4. Some Fella on The Moon | September 8, 2022 at 3:03 am | Reply

    I understand his point think of two people on trains two different trains one person is a Ant-Dog which is how I define human behaviour and the entropic arrow of the universe lets say its going this way ————-> (ANT-DOGS) Direction ———> |(x)|(x=laws of special relativity means actual time space 4 dimensionally) <——————————— ( now this line represents the future of space time force which not been localised by AnT-DOG entropy but by lets say Ant-Dog 2.0 ———— [its on the choo choo train ] anyways its coming from the opposite direction with a pistol of information which is an actually just like Ant-DoG storing [information] except it has future compression pushing towards (x) so what happens is AD1 and AD2.0 have both been sent on a mission to meet each at (x) it then creates two seperate fluxes on (x) and causes and exchange one is filled with messages from the future other from the past they bounce as if both being opposite magnets but not without slightly touching giving a residue happens next is x moves back and says Hi I'm AD3.0 Nice to meet you both tell interesting stories it was great two meet you both would you like to come with me so I can hear more about your lives ? And Ad3 tells Ad4.0 who talks s*** and who he liked better which is his wife or Earth

  5. living things decrease local entropy. You can not unbreak an egg, but you can feed it to a chicken and get a new egg, living things take high entropy dead things and convert them back to low entropy living things. The entropy law is formulated for a CLOSED SYSTEM which is a hypothetical state, not even a black hole is a closed system, no physical system is closed! Life exports high entropy and imports low entropy so the 2nd law is often misunderstood

  6. The spin period of the topological vortex field pairs can provided with the fundamental nature of time. The absoluteness of time is that each vortex field has its own spin period. At the same time, the relativity of time is different vortex fields may have different spin period. Left rotation and right rotation are the two sides of the same topological vortex. The prediction that Majorana fermion is its own antiparticle can be generated in the topological vortex field.

  7. Hey, SciTechDaily, do you think you could find some images of RIGHT-HANDED DNA (the common form in all living organisms) for once? They are almost all left-handed. Just a little more scientific accuracy would be nice.

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