Related papers: Potential of longevity: hidden in structural compl…
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…
Robustness, the ability of a system to maintain performance under significant and unanticipated environmental changes, is a critical property for robotic systems. While biological systems naturally exhibit robustness, there is no…
A fundamental issue discussed in evolutionary biology is the transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms. Here we develop non-robust models provided in [1] and attempt to get robust models investigated how differentiation of…
The intricacy and diversity inherent in living organisms present a formidable obstacle to the establishment of a universally accepted definition. Life manifests in a multitude of forms, exhibiting various attributes such as growth,…
A tumor can be thought of as an ecosystem, which critically means that we cannot just consider it as a collection of mutated cells but more as a complex system of many interacting cellular and microenvironmental elements. At its simplest, a…
Apparent biodiversity on earth exists only if we compare different species separated from their environments. Meanwhile coexisting species have to be identical in terms of energetic interactions. Consider the biosphere as a network of…
Living organisms have some common structures, chemical reactions and molecular structures. The organisms consist of cells with cell division, they have homochirality of protein and carbohydrate units, and metabolism, and genetics, and they…
As cell proliferation is limited due to the loss of telomere repeats in DNA of normal somatic cells during division, telomere attrition can possibly play an important role in determining the maximum life span of organisms as well as…
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…
Many biological systems perform close to their physical limits, but promoting this optimality to a general principle seems to require implausibly fine tuning of parameters. Using examples from a wide range of systems, we show that this…
All systems are expected to be designed to fulfil their functions over their requested lifetime. Nevertheless, failure of a system may occur, and this is unfortunately, true also for vacuum systems. From a mechanical point of view,…
Living species, ranging from bacteria to animals, exist in environmental conditions that exhibit spatial and temporal heterogeneity which requires them to adapt. Risk-spreading through spontaneous phenotypic variations is a known concept in…
In a complex system, the individual components are neither so tightly coupled or correlated that they can all be treated as a single unit, nor so uncorrelated that they can be approximated as independent entities. Instead, patterns of…
Living systems exhibit a range of fundamental characteristics: they are active, self-referential, self-modifying systems. This paper explores how these characteristics create challenges for conventional scientific approaches and why they…
Various features of the development of individual living species, including individual humans, are programmed. Is death also programmed, and if yes, how is it implemented and what can be the underlying mechanism providing the inevitability…
We present, solve and numerically simulate a simple model that describes the consequences of increased longevity on fertility rates, population growth and the distribution of wealth in developed societies. We look at the consequences of the…
Phenotype of biological systems needs to be robust against mutation in order to sustain themselves between generations. On the other hand, phenotype of an individual also needs to be robust against fluctuations of both internal and external…
The population is composed of individuals characterised by their genetic strings, phenotypes and ages. We discuss the influence of probabilities of survival of the individuals on the dynamics and phenotypic variability of the population. We…
Structural cellular materials in nature, such as wood, trabecular bone, corals, and dentin combine complex biological functions with structural roles, such as skeletal support and impact protection1,2. They feature complex structural…
We study the probabilities of evolution based on random mutations and natural selection. We conclude that evolution to multicellular eukaryots, or even prokaryots, is unlikely to be the result of only random mutations. Complex organisms…