Related papers: Towards physical principles of biological evolutio…
We propose a model for evolution aiming to reproduce statistical features of fossil data, in particular the distributions of extinction events, the distribution of species per genus and the distribution of lifetimes, all of which are known…
The evolution of various competing cell types in tissues, and the resulting persistent tissue population, is studied numerically and analytically in a particle-based model of active tissues. Mutations change the properties of cells in…
We consider a particular instance of the lift of controlled systems recently proposed in the theory of irreversible thermodynamics and show that it leads to a variational principle for an optimal control in the sense of Pontryagin. Then we…
In this paper, we inspect well-known population genetics and social dynamics models. In these models, interacting individuals, while participating in a self-organizing process, give rise to the emergence of complex behaviors and patterns.…
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…
Classical population genetics a priori assigns fitness to alleles without considering molecular or functional properties of proteins that these alleles encode. Here we study population dynamics in a model where fitness can be inferred from…
Why life is complex and --most importantly-- what is the origin of the over abundance of complexity in nature? This is a fundamental scientific question which, paraphrasing the late Per Bak, "is screaming to be answered but seldom is even…
The equations of evolutionary change by natural selection are commonly expressed in statistical terms. Fisher's fundamental theorem emphasizes the variance in fitness. Quantitative genetics expresses selection with covariances and…
Herein we consider various concepts of entropy as measures of the complexity of phenomena and in so doing encounter a fundamental problem in physics that affects how we understand the nature of reality. In essence the difficulty has to do…
Advances in science and engineering often reveal the limitations of classical approaches initially used to understand, predict, and control phenomena. With progress, conceptual categories must often be re-evaluated to better track recently…
One of the basic frameworks in science views behavioral products as a process within a dynamic system. The mechanism might be seen as a representation of many instances of centralized control in real time. Many real systems, however,…
Understanding why we age is a long-lived open problem in evolutionary biology. Aging is prejudicial to the individual and evolutionary forces should prevent it, but many species show signs of senescence as individuals age. Here, I will…
Interactions among living organisms, from bacteria colonies to human societies, are inherently more complex than interactions among particles and nonliving matter. Group interactions are a particularly important and widespread class,…
We study the evolution of sexual and asexual populations in general fitness landscapes. We find deep relations between the mathematics of biological evolution and the formalism of quantum mechanics. We give the general structure of the…
Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs,…
The processes of ecological interactions, dispersal and mutations shape the dynamics of biological communities, and analogous eco-evolutionary processes acting upon economic entities have been proposed to explain economic change. This…
Aging is a universal consequence of life, yet researchers have identified no universal theme. This manuscript considers aging from the perspective of entropy, wherein things fall apart. We first examine biological information change as a…
An extrapolation of the genetic complexity of organisms to earlier times suggests that life began before the Earth was formed. Life may have started from systems with single heritable elements that are functionally equivalent to a…
A celebrated and controversial hypothesis conjectures that some biological systems --parts, aspects, or groups of them-- may extract important functional benefits from operating at the edge of instability, halfway between order and…
Biology is data-rich, and it is equally rich in concepts and hypotheses. Part of trying to understand biological processes and systems is therefore to confront our ideas and hypotheses with data using statistical methods to determine the…