Related papers: Potential of longevity: hidden in structural compl…
This paper summarizes previous work linking protein aggregation to the heterozygosity of organisms. It also cites the literature showing a correlation between species' morphological complexity and the lengths of their proteins. These two…
Collectives form non-equilibrium social structures characterised by a volatile dynamics. Individuals join or leave. Social relations change quickly. Therefore, differently from engineered or ecological systems, a resilient reference state…
Microbial populations generally evolve in volatile environments, under conditions fluctuating between harsh and mild, e.g. as the result of sudden changes in toxin concentration or nutrient abundance. Environmental variability thus shapes…
Author's early work on aging is developed to yield a relationship between life spans and the velocity of aging. The mathematical analysis shows that the mean extent of the advancement of aging throughout one's life is conserved, or…
The storage effect is a general explanation for coexistence in a variable environment. The generality of the storage effect is both a strength - it can be quantified in many systems - and a challenge - there is not a clear relationship…
As urban critic Jane Jacobs conceived, a city is essentially the problem of organized complexity. What underlies the complexity refers to a structural factor, called living structure, which is defined as a mathematical structure composed of…
One thing that discriminates living things from inanimate matter is their ability to generate similarly complex or non-random architectures in a large abundance. From DNA sequences to folded protein structures, living cells, microbial…
Through extensive studies of dynamical system modeling cellular growth and reproduction, we find evidence that complexity arises in multicellular organisms naturally through evolution. Without any elaborate control mechanism, these systems…
Robustness, the insensitivity of some of a biological system's functionalities to a set of distinct conditions, is intimately linked to fitness. Recent studies suggest that it may also play a vital role in enabling the evolution of species.…
Rigidity is an emergent property of materials - it is not a feature of individual components that comprise the structure, but instead arises from interactions between many constituent parts. Recently, it has been recognized that…
Discovered by Christopher Alexander, living structure is a physical phenomenon, through which the quality of the built environment or artifacts can be judged objectively. It bears two distinguished properties just like a tree: "far more…
The present view of biological phenomena is based on a biochemical paradigm that development of living organisms is defined by information stored in a molecular form as some genetic code. However, new discoveries indicate that biological…
Civilization cannot sustain an exponential growth for long time even when neglecting numerous laws of physics! In this paper, we examine what are fundamental obstacles to long term survival of a civilization and its possibility to colonize…
In a multiverse context, determining the probability of being in our particular universe depends on estimating its overall habitability compared to other universes with different values of the fundamental constants. One of the most…
Reliability of a system is considered where the components' random lifetimes may be dependent. The structure of the system is described by an associated "lattice polynomial" function. Based on that descriptor, general framework formulas are…
A dynamic model for failures in biological organisms is proposed and studied both analytically and numerically. Each cell in the organism becomes dead under sufficiently strong stress, and is then allowed to be healed with some probability.…
Molecular phenotypes are important links between genomic information and organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Complex phenotypes, which are also called quantitative traits, often depend on multiple genomic loci. Their evolution…
Diffusion of molecules within biological cells and tissues is strongly influenced by crowding. A key quantity to characterize diffusion is the particle lifetime, which is the time taken for a diffusing particle to exit by hitting an…
We recently introduced Misrepair-accumulation theory as an interpretation on aging mechanism. For better understanding this theory, we discuss here in more details the new concept of Misrepair and the concept of accumulation of Misrepairs.…
Life systems are complex and hierarchical, with diverse components at different scales, yet they sustain themselves, grow, and evolve over time. How can a theory of such complex biological states be developed? Here we note that for a…