Related papers: Why is life so exact?
Molecular biology is a nanotechnology that works--it has worked for billions of years and in an amazing variety of circumstances. At its core is a system for acquiring, processing and communicating information that is universal, from…
The evolution of complexity has been a central theme for Biology [2] and Artificial Life research [1]. It is generally agreed that complexity has increased in our universe, giving way to life, multi-cellularity, societies, and systems of…
Metabolic networks perform some of the most fundamental functions in living cells, including energy transduction and building block biosynthesis. While these are the best characterized networks in living systems, understanding their…
A phenomenological model of self-organization explaining the emergence of a complexity with features that apparently satisfy the specific criteria usually required for recognizing the appearance of life in laboratory is presented. The…
Characterizing structural and dynamic properties of proteins and large macromolecular assemblies is crucial to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying biological functions. In the field of Structural Biology, no single method…
Probabilistic inference provides a language for describing how organisms may learn from and adapt to their environment. The computations needed to implement probabilistic inference often require specific representations, akin to having the…
Life is commonly described as a self-organized, far-from-equilibrium process that maintains internal order by consuming free energy and exporting entropy. This thermodynamic view underlies diverse theoretical frameworks -- from autopoiesis…
The complex physicochemical structures and chemical reactions in living organism have some common features: (1) The life processes take place in the cytosol in the cells, which, from a physicochemical point of view is an emulsion of…
It is often stated that there are no laws in biology, where everything is contingent and could have been otherwise, being solely the result of historical accidents. Furthermore, the customary introduction of fundamental biological entities…
The dynamic instability of the living systems and the "superposition" of different forms of randomness are viewed as a component of the contingently increasing organization of life along evolution. We briefly survey how classical and…
Precision predictions combined with precise measurements are a major tool in sharpening our understanding of the fundamental laws underlying microscopic as well as macroscopic systems. Here, I present a few remarkable examples covering the…
Proteins, by virtue of their central role in most biological processes, represent one of the key subjects of the study of molecular evolution. Inherent to the indispensability of proteins for living cells is the fact that a given protein…
Synthetic biology is a recent area of biological engineering, whose aim is to provide cells with novel functionalities. A number of important results regarding the development of control circuits in synthetic biology have been achieved…
Exact law of mortality dynamics in changing populations and environment is derived. The law is universal for all species, from single cell yeast to humans. It includes no characteristics of animal- environment interactions (metabolism etc)…
The cell is arguably the most fundamental unit of life and is central to understanding biology. Accurate modeling of cells is important for this understanding as well as for determining the root causes of disease. Recent advances in…
The improbability of a spontaneously generated self-assembling molecule has suggested that life began with a set of simpler, collectively replicating elements, such as an enclosed autocatalytic set of polymers (or protocell). Since…
Developmental processes in multicellular organisms occur far from equilibrium, yet produce complex patterns with astonishing reproducibility. We measure the precision and reproducibility of bilaterally symmetric fly wings across the natural…
Pure and homogeneous biological macromolecules (i.e. proteins, nucleic acids, protein-protein or protein-nucleic acid complexes, and functional assemblies such as ribosomes and viruses) are the key for consistent and reliable biochemical…
We study a physical system which, while devoid of the complexity one usually associates with proteins, nevertheless displays a remarkable array of protein-like properties. The constructive hypothesis that this striking resemblance is not…
In living systems, we often see the emergence of the ingredients necessary for computation -- the capacity for information transmission, storage, and modification -- begging the question of how we may exploit or imitate such biological…