26,245 assembled unigenes were assigned to the following 5 KEGG biochemical pathways: metabolism (13,090 unigenes), genetic information processing (8976), organism system (7174), cellular processes (4106) and environmental information processing (3019) (Additional file 1: Figure S3).
The five main KEGG biochemical pathways were represented: metabolism (2349 contigs), genetic information processing (2082), organism system (851), cellular processes (764) and environmental information processing (783).
First, I will briefly discuss how human activities create anthropogenic niches that affect ecological and evolutionary responses of organisms, and I will also illustrate how such environments may interfere with information processing of organisms.
Two key principles underlie molecular level information processing in organisms: conformational dynamics of macromolecules and self-assembly of macromolecules.
Therefore, these methods incorporate different types of relationships that exist in biological systems (i.e. genetic and environmental information processing, cellular processes, and organism systems).
"We've found an unexpected high ability of information processing in this organism," said Toshiyuki Nakagaki, a researcher at Hokkaido University who has long studied slime molds.
Intra-cellular as well as inter-cellular molecular inhibitions play an important role in the information processing of hypernetwork organisms, by maintaining a balance of the molecular cascade reactions.
The conserved pathway maps include many pathway maps classified as "genetic information processing", whereas the organism-specific pathway maps mainly include pathway maps for catabolism, reflecting evolutionary aspects.
These pathways belonged to 25 clades under 5 major KEGG categories, that is, "Metabolism," "Genetic information processing," "Cellular process," "Environmental information processing," and "Organism systems" (Additional file 8).
Our methodology is applicable to any biological system subject to stochastic dynamics and can be used to elucidate how population-based information processing may contribute to organism-level functionality.
