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Organisms maintain the status quo, holding key physiological variables constant to within an acceptable tolerance, and yet adapt with precision and plasticity to dynamic changes in externalities. What organizational principles ensure such…
Living systems transmit heritable information using the replicating gene sequences and the cycling regulators assembled around gene sequences. Here I develop a framework for heredity and development that includes the cycling regulators…
Empirical studies of graphs have contributed enormously to our understanding of complex systems. Known today as network science, what was originally a theoretical study of graphs has grown into a more scientific exploration of communities…
Many cellular processes involve information processing and decision making. We can probe these processes at increasing molecular detail. The analysis of heterogeneous data remains a challenge that requires new ways of thinking about cells…
This paper argues that self-awareness is a learned behavior that emerges in organisms whose brains have a sufficiently integrated, complex ability for associative learning and memory. Continual sensory input of information related to the…
A simple model for the formation of a complex organism is introduced. Individuals can communicate and specialize, leading to an increase in productivity. If there are limits to the capacity of individuals to communicate with other…
A phenomenological model of self-organization explaining the emergence of a complexity with features that apparently satisfy the specific criteria usually required for recognizing the appearance of life in laboratory is presented. The…
Life depends as much on the flow of information as on the flow of energy. Here we review the many efforts to make this intuition precise. Starting with the building blocks of information theory, we explore examples where it has been…
Branching processes are models used to describe populations that reproduce and die over time. In the classical setting, an individual's reproductive capacity remains constant throughout its lifetime. However, in real-world situations,…
Empirical evidence suggesting that living systems might operate in the vicinity of critical points, at the borderline between order and disorder, has proliferated in recent years, with examples ranging from spontaneous brain activity to…
Many organisms exhibit branching morphologies that twist around each other and become entangled. Entanglement occurs when different objects interlock, creating complex and often irreversible configurations. This physical phenomenon is…
Plants are capable of intelligent responses to complex environmental signals. Learning and memory play fundamental roles in such responses. Two simple models of plant memory are proposed based on the calcium-signalling system. The memory…
Living organisms are not just random collections of organic molecules. There is continuous information processing going on in the apparent bouncing around of molecules of life. Optimisation criteria in this information processing can be…
The dynamics of a wide range of real systems, from email patterns to earthquakes, display a bursty, intermittent nature, characterized by short timeframes of intensive activity followed by long times of no or reduced activity. The…
Molecular biology features numerous complexes of proteins that coordinate in an interlocking fashion to fulfill different functions. Adaptive evolution explains some of this complexity, but needn't be the default when neutral explanations…
Coupled natural systems are generally modeled at multiple abstraction levels. Both structural scale and behavioral complexity of these models are determinants in the kinds of questions that can be posed and answered. As scale and complexity…
Embryonic development leads to the reproducible and ordered appearance of complexity from egg to adult. The successive differentiation of different cell types, that elaborates this complexity, result from the activity of gene networks and…
A quite general interaction process of a multi-component system is analysed by the extended effective potential method liberated from usual limitations of perturbation theory or integrable model. The obtained causally complete solution of…
Social contagion is a ubiquitous and fundamental process that drives individual and social changes. Although social contagion arises as a result of cognitive processes and biases, the integration of cognitive mechanisms with the theory of…
Neuronal networks provide living organisms with the ability to process information. They are also characterized by abundant recurrent connections, which give rise to strong feedback that dictates their dynamics and endows them with fading…