Thermodynamics, Entropy & Divergence in Developmental Biology

We hypothesize that developmental transitions during Drosophila melanogaster embryogenesis map onto thermodynamic transitions which should be visible in information theoretic characterizations of the biological states. We investigate this hypothesis using publicly available temporal transcriptomic data. We show that the Permutation Entropy of Indexed Ensembles (∏ Entropy) and vector variations of the Kullback-Leibler divergence map are indeed able to identify transitions between developmental stages via distinct changes in information theoretic complexity. We discuss specific implications for a broader thermodynamic framework of developmental biology.