Related papers: Erwin Schroedinger, Francis Crick and epigenetic s…
The multifarious internal workings of organisms are difficult to reconcile with a single feature defining a state of being alive. Indeed, definitions of life rely on emergent properties (growth, capacity to evolve, agency) only symptomatic…
In this paper we derive a statistical law of Life. It governs the probability of death, or complementary of survival, of the living organisms. We have deduced such a law coupling the widely used Weibull statistics, developed for describing…
Erwin Schr\"odinger is famous for presenting his wave equation of motion that jump-started quantum mechanics. His disenchantment with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics led him to unveil the Schr\"odinger's cat paradox,…
Most of the DNA that composes a complex organism is non-coding and defined as junk. Even the coding part is composed of genes that affect the phenotype differently. Therefore, a random mutation has an effect on the specimen fitness that…
We develop a framework to discuss stability of epigenetic states as first exit problems in dynamical systems with noise. We consider in particular the stability of the lysogenic state of the lambda prophage, which is known to exhibit…
Nearly all cell models explicitly or implicitly deal with the biophysical constraints that must be respected for life to persist. Despite this, there is almost no systematicity in how these constraints are implemented, and we lack a…
One of the most challenging problems in microbiology is to understand how a small fraction of microbes that resists killing by antibiotics can emerge in a population of genetically identical cells, the phenomenon known as persistence or…
What Quantum Brain Dynamics (QBD) considers is not just these other functions of the brain, this is because they can be well analyzed with the workings of classical mechanics (even though they still play host to a quantum description). It…
The master equation describing non-equilibrium one-dimensional problems like diffusion limited reactions or critical dynamics of classical spin systems can be written as a Schr\"odinger equation in which the wave function is the probability…
Complex evolving systems such as the biosphere, ecosystems and societies exhibit sudden collapses, for reasons that are only partially understood. Here we study this phenomenon using a mathematical model of a system that evolves under…
The protein folding problem must ultimately be solved on all length scales from the atomic up through a hierarchy of complicated structures. By analyzing the stability of the folding process using physics and mathematics, this paper shows…
A better grasp of the physical foundations of life is necessary before we can understand the processes occurring inside a living cell. In his physical theory of the cell, American physiologist Gilbert Ling introduced an important notion of…
This paper presents an optimization approach to explain why and how a quantum system evolves from an arbitrary initial state to a stationary state, satisfying the time-independent Schr\"{o}dinger equation. It also points out the inaccuracy…
We propose and analyze a stochastic model to investigate epigenetic mutations, i.e., modifications of the genetic information that control gene expression patterns in a cell but do not alter the DNA sequence. Epigenetic mutations are…
A key challenge in systems biology is the elucidation of the underlying principles, or fundamental laws, which determine the cellular phenotype. Understanding how these fundamental principles are altered in diseases like cancer is important…
Life on earth is distinguished by long-lived correlations in time. The patterns of material organization that characterize living organisms today are contingent on events that occurred billions of years ago. This contingency is a necessary…
From its seemingly non-intuitive and puzzling nature, most evident in numerous EPR-like gedankenexperiments to its almost ubiquitous presence in quantum technologies, entanglement is at the heart of modern quantum physics. First introduced…
Synthetic biology sets out to implement new functions in cells, and to develop a deeper understanding of biological design principles. In 2000, Elowitz and Leibler showed that by rational design of the reaction network, and using existing…
Impedance Spectroscopy resolves electrical properties into uncorrelated variables, as a function of frequency, with exquisite resolution. Separation is robust and most useful when the system is linear. Impedance spectroscopy combined with…
Several aspects of mathematical astrobiology are discussed. It is argued that around the time of the origin of life the handedness of biomolecules must have established itself through an instability. Possible pathways of producing a certain…