Advances in Computational Biology: A Real Boost or a Wishful Thinking

Computational biology is on the verge of a paradigm shift in its research practice – from a data-based (computational) paradigm to an information-based (cognitive) paradigm. As in the other research fields, this transition is impeded by lack of a right understanding about what is actually hidden behind the term “information”. The paper is intended to clarify this issue and introduces two new notions of “physical information” and “semantic information”, which together constitute the term “information”. Some implications of this introduction are considered.