The reader is asked to hold the idea that a variety of biological systems at various levels of the biological scale of organisation exhibit interpretative and adaptive capacities. Accordingly, pattern recognition is a cyclic negative feedback process reconciling the interpretation of the whole and the preunderstanding of the parts. As this article unfolds it is hoped that the reader will gain an appreciation of the ways in which many biological systems exhibit cognitive capacities. Some of these capacities may be computational in the sense of being programmable but others may not be. It will not be possible to examine the breadth of examples that might be accessed and we shall limit our examination to a brief review of a few selected cases related to our own work.
Proteins are in many ways the 'workhorses' of the cell.
Some proteins behave like 'wires' to carry electrons, others shunt electrons and a few can facilitate the temporary storage and flow of protons. They are smart materials. Indeed, the integrative role played by enzymes suggests that if we thought of the cell as a text or internal dialogue, enzymes would be the verbs. There are other kinds of smart biomolecules. For example, the chromatin of eukaryotic cells that comprises mixtures of DNA, RNA and proteins has many roles to play in the expression of genes through the interactions of many molecular species.