Related papers: Biology is a constructive physics
Understanding the dynamics of genome rearrangements is a major issue of phylogenetics. Phylogenetics is the study of species evolution. A major goal of the field is to establish evolutionary relationships within groups of species, in order…
Evolutionary dynamics is often viewed as a subtle process of change accumulation that causes a divergence among organisms and their genomes. However, this interpretation is an inheritance of a gradualistic view that has been challenged at…
As computer scientists working in bioinformatics/computational biology, we often face the challenge of coming up with an algorithm to answer a biological question. This occurs in many areas, such as variant calling, alignment, and assembly.…
A measure called Physical Complexity is established and calculated for a population of sequences, based on statistical physics, automata theory, and information theory. It is a measure of the quantity of information in an organism's genome.…
We introduce a population dynamics model, where individual genomes are represented by bit-strings. Selection is described by death probabilities which depend on these genomes, and new individuals continuously replace the ones that die,…
We study the Fisher model describing natural selection in a population with a diploid structure of a genome by differential- geometric methods. For the selection dynamics we introduce an affine connection which is shown to be the…
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…
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…
We study the dynamics of a system composed of interacting units each with a complex internal structure comprising many subunits. We consider the case in which each subunit grows in a multiplicative manner. We propose a model for such…
Motivated by a recent article on open problems in artificial life, here I postulate three laws which form a mathematical framework to describe artificial life evolutionary dynamics. They are based on a continuous approximation of population…
A key challenge in modern computing is to develop systems that address complex, dynamic problems in a scalable and efficient way, because the increasing complexity of software makes designing and maintaining efficient and flexible systems…
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…
By linking conceptual theories with observed data, generative models can support reasoning in complex situations. They have come to play a central role both within and beyond statistics, providing the basis for power analysis in molecular…
We present a modelling framework for the dynamics of cells structured by the concentration of a micromolecule they contain. We derive general equations for the evolution of the cell population and of the extra-cellular concentration of the…
Nature features a plethora of extraordinary photonic architectures that have been optimized through natural evolution. While numerical optimization is increasingly and successfully used in photonics, it has yet to replicate any of these…
We establish the general conditions under which evolution in the laws of physics and matter creation or destruction are closely intertwined. They make use of global time variables canonically dual to the constants of Nature. Such times flow…
In return for the long-standing contributions of Physics to Biology, now the inverse way is frequently traveled through in order to think about many physics phenomena. In this vein, evolutionary algorithms, particularly genetic algorithms,…
The advent of new experimental genomic technologies and the massive increase of DNA sequence information is helping researchers better understand how our genes work. Recently, experiments on mRNA abundance (gene expression) have revealed…
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…
A mathematical model of interacting species filling ecological niches left by the extinction of others is introduced. Species organize themselves into genera of all sizes. The size of a genus on average grows linearly with its age,…