Related papers: Life at the edge: complexity and criticality in bi…
Numerous definitions for complexity have been proposed over the last half century, with little consensus achieved on how to use the term. A definition of complexity is supplied here that is closely related to the Kolmogorov Complexity and…
A full accounting of biological robustness remains elusive; both in terms of the mechanisms by which robustness is achieved and the forces that have caused robustness to grow over evolutionary time. Although its importance to topics such as…
The probability that life spontaneously emerges in a suitable environment (abiogenesis) is one of the major unknowns in astrobiology. Assessing its value is impeded by the lack of an accepted theory for the origin of life, and is further…
Complex systems with tightly coadapted parts frequently appear in living systems and are difficult to account for through Darwinian evolution, that is random variation and natural selection, if the constituent parts are independently coded…
Due to recent advances in synthetic biology and artificial life, the origin of life is currently a hot topic of research. We review the literature and argue that the two traditionally competing "replicator-first" and "metabolism-first"…
The rapidly increasing interest in the quantum properties of living matter stimulates a discussion of the fundamental properties of life as well as quantum mechanics. In this discussion often concepts are used that originate in philosophy…
Cellular heterogeneity is an immanent property of biological systems that covers very different aspects of life ranging from genetic diversity to cell-to-cell variability driven by stochastic molecular interactions, and noise induced cell…
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…
The concept of evolutionary development of structures constituted a \emph{real} revolution in biology: it was possible to understand how the very complex structures of life can arise in an out-of-equilibrium system. The investigation of…
Nature's many complex systems--physical, biological, and cultural--are islands of low-entropy order within increasingly disordered seas of surrounding, high-entropy chaos. Energy is a principal facilitator of the rising complexity of all…
Complex systems and their underlying convoluted networks are ubiquitous, all we need is an eye for them. They pose problems of organized complexity which cannot be approached with a reductionist method. Complexity science and its emergent…
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,…
Complexity is a multi-faceted phenomenon, involving a variety of features including disorder, nonlinearity, and self-organisation. We use a recently developed rigorous framework for complexity to understand measures of complexity. We…
To unveil the logic of cell from a level of chemical reaction dynamics, we need to clarify how ensemble of chemicals can autonomously produce the set of chemical, without assuming a specific external control echanism. A cell consists of a…
Criticality is hypothesized as a physical mechanism underlying efficient transitions between cortical states and remarkable information processing capacities in the brain. While considerable evidence generally supports this hypothesis,…
At the point of a second order phase transition also termed as a critical point, systems display long range order and their macroscopic behaviors are independent of the microscopic details making up the system. Due to these properties, it…
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…
A common trait of complex systems is that they can be represented by means of a network of interacting parts. It is, in fact, the network organisation (more than the parts) what largely conditions most higher-level properties, which are not…
Understanding and modelling the complexity of the immune system is a challenge that is shared by the ImmunoComplexiT$^1$ thematic network from the RNSC. The immune system is a complex biological, adaptive, highly diversified, self-organized…
There are innumerable 'biological complexity measure's. While some patterns emerge from these attempts to represent biological complexity, a single measure to encompass the seemingly countless features of biological systems, still eludes…