Related papers: Life's mechanism
Living systems continuously transform matter and energy through the chemical processes that constitute their metabolism. The overall metabolic rate of an organism correlates positively with its body mass, however both the exact scaling…
Understanding how biological homochirality emerged remains a challenge for the researchers interested in the origin of life. During the last decades, stable non-racemic steady states of nonequilibrium chemical systems have been discussed as…
Much of our mechanistic understanding of the functions of biological macromolecules is based on static structural experiments, which can be modelled either as single structures or conformational ensembles. While these provide us with…
For more than 100 years, humanity (both specialists and enthusiastic laics) has been searching for extraterrestrial life hoping we are not alone. The first step in the quest for extraterrestrial life is to define what and where exactly to…
The genetic blueprint for the essential functions of life is encoded in DNA, which is translated into proteins -- the engines driving most of our metabolic processes. Recent advancements in genome sequencing have unveiled a vast diversity…
The evolutionary biology of aging is fundamental to understanding the mechanisms of aging and how to develop anti-aging treatments. Thus far most evolutionary theory concerns the genetics of aging with limited physiological integration.…
Biological nanomachines are nanometer-size macromolecular complexes that catalyze chemical reactions in the presence of substrate molecules. The catalytic functions carried out by such nanomachines in the cytoplasm, and biological membranes…
If life is sustained by a process of photosynthesis, not necessarily the same existing on Earth, the surface temperature of the star and the orbit of the host planet cannot be whatsoever. In fact the global life cycle, no matter how…
A hallmark of living systems is the ability to employ a common set of versatile building blocks that can self-organize into a multitude of different structures, in a way that can be controlled with minimal cost. This capability can only be…
Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable complexity of living organisms is a fundamental challenge in science and technology. We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematicfilm of microtubules and…
Living microorganisms have evolved dedicated sensory machinery to detect environmental perturbations, processing these signals through biochemical networks to guide behavior. Replicating such capabilities in synthetic active matter remains…
Proteins control many vital functions in living cells, such as cell growth and cell division. Reliable coordination of these functions requires the spatial and temporal organizaton of proteins inside cells, which encodes information about…
Continuous adaptation allows survival in an ever-changing world. Adjustments in the synaptic coupling strength between neurons are essential for this capability, setting us apart from simpler, hard-wired organisms. How these changes can be…
Nonequilibrium dynamics of biomembranes with active inclusions is considered. The inclusions represent protein molecules which perform cyclic internal conformational motions driven by the energy brought with ATP ligands. As protein…
Multi-component molecular machines are ubiquitous in biology. We review recent progress on describing their thermodynamic properties using autonomous bipartite Markovian dynamics. The first and second laws can be split into local versions…
In living cells, cycles of formation and dissolution of liquid droplets can mediate biological functions such as DNA repair. However, the minimal physicochemical prerequisite for such droplet oscillations remains elusive. Here, we present a…
Life on earth is distinguished by long-lived correlations in time. The patterns of material organization that characterize living organisms today are contingent on events that occurred billions of years ago. This contingency is a necessary…
Escherichia coli has long been used as a model organism due to the extensive experimental characterization of its pathways and molecular components. Take chemotaxis as an example, which allows bacteria to sense and swim in response to…
We introduce a logic for knowledge representation and reasoning on protein-protein interactions. Modulo a theory, formulas describe protein structures and dynamic changes. They can be composed in order to add or remove static and dynamic…
The well-defined but intricate course of time evolution exhibited by many naturally occurring phenomena suggests some source of dynamic order sustaining it. In spite of its obviousness as a problem, it has remained absent from the…