A must reading for all in the biosemiotics community:
Jesper Hoffmeyer:
Biosemiotics. An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs
Scranton University Press, 2008.
The book consists of three parts and a postscript. Part one contains a general discussion of the biosemiotic project as a strategy in life science and Part two contains a detailed exposition of biosemiotics as it may be employed in the understanding of life processes at different levels of animate nature. Part 3 addresses the radical consequences that the biosemiotic perspective will have on our thinking in a range of other areas: i.e., the origin of language, ethics, aesthetics, biomedicine, environmental understanding, health, cognitive science and biotechnology. In the Postscript is given a brief account of the historical development of the discipline, as well as a prognosis for its future growth.
See more about the book here.