Symmetry and Minimum Principle at the Basis of the Genetic Code

Abstract

The importance of the notion of symmetry in physics is well established: could it also be the case for the genetic code? In this spirit, a model for the Genetic Code based on continuous symmetries and entitled the "Crystal Basis Model" has been proposed a few years ago. The present paper is a review of the model, of some of its first applications as well as of its recent developments. Indeed, after a motivated presentation of our mathematical model, we illustrate its pertinence by applying it for the elaboration and verification of sum rules for codon usage probabilities, as well as for establishing relations and some predictions between physical-chemical properties of amino-acids. Then, defining in this context a "bio-spin" structure for the nucleotides and codons, the interaction between a couple of codon-anticodon can simply be represented by a (bio) spin-spin potential. This approach will constitute the second part of the paper where, imposing the minimum energy principle, an analysis of the evolution of the genetic code can be performed with good agreement with the generally accepted scheme. A more precise study of this interaction model provides informations on codon bias, consistent with data.