The introduction to one of the linked papers is far more informative and frankly readable than the article:
> Biological systems have access to a lot of information—genetically, epigenetically, morphologically, and metabolically—and the acquisition of that information occurs via evolutionary selection over successive cycles of replication and propagation [7]. One way to look at such systems is by comparing the self-dissimilarity between different classes of a complex system, allowing a model-free comparison [8]. However, it has also been suggested that much of this information is effectively encrypted, with the heritable information being encoded with random keys from the environment [9]. As such, these random keys are recorded as frozen accidents and increase the operative information content, as well as help direct the system during the process of evolution, producing objects that can construct other objects [10].