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We propose a principle of consistency between different hierarchical levels of biological systems. Given a consistency between molecule replication and cell reproduction, universal statistical laws on cellular chemical abundances are…
The origin and early evolution of eukaryotes are one of the major transitions in the evolution of life on earth. One of its most interesting aspects is the emergence of cellular organelles, their dynamics, their functions, and their…
We describe a concept that has the potential to change how we think about the underlying mechanisms of cell membrane electroporation (EP). Prior experimental, theoretical and modeling have emphasized a single pore lifetime as adequate for…
Throughout the evolution of biological species on Earth, cells and organs have developed many complex structures and processes to ensure their interactions with individual chemical molecules (small and macromolecular) and nanoscale objects…
Cell type (e.g. pluripotent cell, fibroblast) is the end result of many complex processes that unfold due to evolutionary, developmental, and transformational stimuli. A cell's phenotype and the discrete, a priori states that define various…
Understanding the origins of complexity is a fundamental challenge with implications for biological and technological systems. Network theory emerges as a powerful tool to model complex systems. Networks are an intuitive framework to…
The search for meaningful structure in biological data has relied on cutting-edge advances in computational technology and data science methods. However, challenges arise as we push the limits of scale and complexity in biological problems.…
Despite their successes in vision and language, foundation models have stumbled in pathology, revealing low accuracy, instability, and heavy computational demands. These shortcomings stem not from tuning problems but from deeper conceptual…
The origin of life is shrouded in mystery, with few surviving clues, obscured by evolutionary competition. Previous reviews have touched on the complementary approaches of top-down and bottom-up synthetic biology to augment our…
Cell shape is fundamental in biology. The average cell shape can influence crucial biological functions, such as cell fate and division orientation. But cell-to-cell shape variability is often regarded as noise. In contrast, recent works…
Surface growth, by association or dissociation of material on the boundaries of a body, is ubiquitous in both natural and engineering systems. It is the fundamental mechanism by which biological materials grow, starting from the level of a…
A first-principles theory is developed for the general evolution of a key structural characteristic of planar granular systems - the cell order distribution. The dynamic equations are constructed and solved in closed form for a number of…
Uncovering structural patterns in collaboration networks is key for understanding how knowledge flows and innovation emerges. These networks often exhibit a rich interplay of meso-scale structures, such as communities, core-periphery…
To further advance our understanding of the brain, new concepts and theories are needed. In particular, the ability of the brain to create information flows must be reconciled with its propensity for synchronization and mass action. The…
Heritability is a central concept in the long-standing debate about nature versus nurture in biological and social sciences. However, existing notions of heritability are based on strong assumptions and do not use explicit causal models. We…
Swarming or collective motion of living entities is one of the most common and spectacular manifestations of living systems having been extensively studied in recent years. A number of general principles have been established. The…
Structured populations are ubiquitous across the biological sciences. Mathematical models of these populations allow us to understand how individual physiological traits drive the overall dynamics in aggregate. For example, linear age- or…
Network theory has unveiled the underlying structure of complex systems such as the Internet or the biological networks in the cell. It has identified universal properties of complex networks, and the interplay between their structure and…
Self-replication is central to all life, and yet how it dynamically emerges in physical, non-equilibrium systems remains poorly understood. Von Neumann's pioneering work in the 1940s and subsequent developments suggest a natural hypothesis:…
Biological systems reach hierarchical complexity that has no counterpart outside the realm of biology. Undoubtedly, biological entities obey the fundamental physical laws. Can today's physics provide an explanatory framework for…