Related papers: Nonlinear aspects of astrobiological research
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…
Many mechanisms, functions and structures of life have been unraveled. However, the fundamental driving force that propelled chemical evolution and led to life has remained obscure. The 2nd law of thermodynamics, written as an equation of…
Methods and techniques of the theory of nonlinear dynamical systems and patterns can be useful in astrophysical applications. Some works on the subjects of dynamical astronomy, stellar pulsation and variability, as well as spatial…
The thermodynamics is studied with the thermodynamic parameter of the lifetime, first-passage time, generalizing the equilibrium thermodynamics. Various ways of describing several stationary nonequilibrium states in the system are…
Astrobiology has been gaining increasing scientific prominence and public attention as the search for life beyond Earth continues to make significant headway on multiple fronts. In view of these recent developments, the fascinating and…
Modern developments in nonequilibrium thermodynamics have significant implications for the origins of life. The reasons for this are closely related to a generalized version of the second law of thermodynamics recently found for entropy…
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Drake formula, it appears interesting to briefly review the history of Astrobiology from the origins up to the epoch of the Drake formula. After recalling the main steps of this history during…
Cellular heterogeneity is an immanent property of biological systems that covers very different aspects of life ranging from genetic diversity to cell-to-cell variability driven by stochastic molecular interactions, and noise induced cell…
It is investigated how biofriendly is the Milky Way for photosynthetic life. Special attention is dedicated to the role of the photobiological regime in the emergence and evolution of this kind of life in terrestrial planets. Following this…
The probability that life spontaneously emerges in a suitable environment (abiogenesis) is one of the major unknowns in astrobiology. Assessing its value is impeded by the lack of an accepted theory for the origin of life, and is further…
The molecular biology revolution of the last seventy five years has transformed our view of living systems. Scientific explanations of biological phenomena are now synonymous with the identification of the genes, proteins, and signaling…
Life arose on Earth sometime in the first few hundred million years after the young planet had cooled to the point that it could support water-based organisms on its surface. The early emergence of life on Earth has been taken as evidence…
Terrestrial and extraterrestrial theories of the origin of life are discussed in the light of latest observations. The available data suggest a dual mode of origin, some of the ingredients, including possibly sugars, were brought to earth…
The ultimate goal of astrobiology is to determine the distribution and diversity of life in the universe. But as the word "biosignature" suggests, what will be detected is not life itself, but an observation implicating a particular process…
Cellular biology exists embedded in a world dominated by random dynamics and chance. Many vital molecules and pieces of cellular machinery diffuse within cells, moving along random trajectories as they collide with the other biomolecular…
Many of the building blocks of life such as amino acids and nucleotides are chiral, i.e., different from their mirror image. Contemporary life selects and synthesizes only one of two possible handednesses. In an abiotic environment,…
The transformation of organic molecules into the simplest self-replicating living system,a microorganism, is accomplished from a unique event or rare events that occurred early in the Universe. The subsequent dispersal on cosmic scales and…
We study the statistical underpinnings of life. We question some common assumptions about the thermodynamics of life and illustrate how, contrary to widespread belief, even in a closed system entropy growth can accompany an increase in…
Cancer, as the uncontrollable cell growth, is related to many branches of biology. In this review, we will discuss three mathematical approaches for studying cancer biology: population dynamics, gene regulation, and developmental biology.…
Astrobiology or exobiology is a relatively new area of science that investigates the possibilities of finding life in other places in the universe. This not only includes the exploration of planets near or distant to Earth, but also the…