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. 2017 Dec 5;8:2395. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2017.02395

FIGURE 1.

FIGURE 1

Mimetic relationships. In biosemiotic terms and according to the sign system of Peirce, the mimetic signal corresponds to the representamen (R), the model to the object (O) and the operator to the Interpretant (I) (Kilstrup, 2015). In (A), the plant’s thorn is the Object (O), the thorn bug is the Representamen (R) and the predatory bird that the prey eludes is the Interpretant (I). In (B), a molecular example: the tRNAPhe is considered to be the Object (O), the 3′ untranslated end of the genome of plant virus TYMV is the representamen (R), while the interpretant (I) is the tRNA precursor processing enzyme RNase P.