Related papers: Potential of longevity: hidden in structural compl…
The probability of the survival of the population of individuals of both sexes of given mature age, procreation rate and structure stability has been searched in the numerical experiment. The populations with long period of reproduction and…
Groups of cells, including clusters of cancerous cells, multicellular organisms, and developing organs, may both grow and break apart. What physical factors control these fractures? In these processes, what sets the eventual size of…
Microbial communities display extreme diversity. A variety of strains or species coexist even when limited by a single resource. It has been argued that metabolite secretion creates new niches and facilitates such diversity. Nonetheless, it…
Systems biology models are useful models of complex biological systems that may require a large amount of experimental data to fit each model's parameters or to approximate a likelihood function. These models range from a few to thousands…
A key question in biological systems is whether genetic diversity persists in the long run under evolutionary competition or whether a single dominant genotype emerges. Classic work by Kalmus in 1945 has established that even in simple…
A simulation model of a population having internal (genetic) structure is presented. The population is subject to selection pressure coming from the environment which is the same in the whole system but changes in time. Reproduction has a…
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…
In order to make a case for or against a trend in the evolution of complexity in biological evolution, complexity needs to be both rigorously defined and measurable. A recent information-theoretic (but intuitively evident) definition…
Soil is a complex, dynamic material, with physical properties that depend on its biological content. We propose a cellular automaton model for self-organizing soil structure, where soil aggregates and serves as food for microbial species.…
Evolution is the process of optimal adaptation of biological populations to their living environments. This is expressed via the concept of fitness, defined as relative reproductive success. However, it has been pointed out that this…
Biological systems reach hierarchical complexity that has no counterpart outside the realm of biology. Undoubtedly, biological entities obey the fundamental physical laws. Can today's physics provide an explanatory framework for…
This paper addresses the theoretical conditions necessary for some subject of study to survive forever. A probabilistic analysis leads to some prerequisite conditions for preserving, say, electronic data indefinitely into the future. The…
The provision of intergenerational care, via the Grandmother Hypothesis, has been implicated in the evolution of post-fertile longevity, particularly in humans. However, if grandmothering does provide fitness benefits, a key question is why…
Even when concepts similar to emergence have been used since antiquity, we lack an agreed definition. However, emergence has been identified as one of the main features of complex systems. Most would agree on the statement ``life is…
Many life-history traits, like the age at maturity or adult longevity, are important determinants of the generation time. For instance, semelparous species whose adults reproduce once and die have shorter generation times than iteroparous…
A common assumption in evolutionary thought is that adaptation drives an increase in biological complexity. However, the rules governing evolution of complexity appear more nuanced. Evolution is deeply connected to learning, where…
Nature uses elongated shapes and filaments to build stable structures, generate motion, and allow complex geometric interactions. In this Review, we examine the role of biological filaments across different length scales. From the molecular…
In this work we propose a physical model of organismal evolution, where phenotype, organism life expectancy, is directly related to genotype i.e. the stability of its proteins which can be determined exactly in the model. Simulating the…
Natural systems are remarkably robust and resilient, maintaining essential functions despite variability, uncertainty, and hostile conditions. Understanding these nonlinear, dynamic behaviours is challenging because such systems involve…
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…