JTW's Evolutionary Origins - Author: Edelman, Gerald M.
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Degeneracy Vs. Redunancy

"Degeneracy is an ubiquitous property of biological systems where nonisomorphic elements can perform the same function. Degeneracy is distinguished from Redundancy which is the case where similar elements perform the same function. The former is particularly favored by natural selection because it contributes to robustness and the ability of the organism to adapt to its surroundings."
(Parag Ghosh, 2001)

"...Degeneracy is a property fundamental to reconciling specificity of recognition with range of recognition....Note that degeneracy is a population property (i.e. it requires variance) and that it must be distinguished from reduncancy, which is used here strictly to refer to the exisitence of repeated units or groups having identical structure and response characteristics. Redundancy alone is insufficient for a wide range of specific recognition because it does not provide the overlapping but nonidentical response characteristics needed to cover a universe of possible stimuli. Degeneracy can, however, act like reduncancy to provide reliablity in a system composed of unreliable componenets (von Neumann 1956, Winogrand and Cowan 1963)."
(Edelman, 1988, pp.50)

Degeneracy and complexity in biological systems:
Gerald M. Edelman and Joseph A. Gally

Distinguishing Adaptive from Non-Adaptive Evolution Using Ashby�s Law of Requisite Variety.

Degeneracy of the Genetic Code

"When the genetic code was deciphered in the early 1960s, it was observed that there are more codons than amino acids, so that most amino acids can correspond to more than one triplet codon. This gives some flexibility to a nucleic acid sequence. Sometimes an amino acid can be encoded from among as many as six possible synonymous codons. Walter Fitch (1974) noted that "the degeneracy of the genetic code provides an enormous plasticity to achieve secondary structure without sacrificing specificity of the message".
(Forsdyke & Mortimer, 2001)

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