Related papers: Why life is hot
The question as to why most higher organisms reproduce sexually has remained open despite extensive research, and has been called "the queen of problems in evolutionary biology". Theories dating back to Weismann have suggested that the key…
Being able to adjust the demand of electricity can be an effective means for power system operators to compensate fluctuating renewable generation, to avoid grid congestion, and to cope with other contingencies. Electric heating and cooling…
Self-replication is a capacity common to every species of living thing, and simple physical intuition dictates that such a process must invariably be fueled by the production of entropy. Here, we undertake to make this intuition rigorous…
A central biological question is how natural organisms are so evolvable (capable of quickly adapting to new environments). A key driver of evolvability is the widespread modularity of biological networks--their organization as functional,…
Recent progress has clarified many features of the global architecture of biological metabolic networks, which have highly organized and optimized tolerances and tradeoffs (HOT) for functional requirements of flexibility, efficiency,…
Generative models of complex systems often require post-hoc parameter adjustments to produce useful outputs. For example, energy-based models for protein design are sampled at an artificially low ''temperature'' to generate novel,…
In the present monograph we formulate a simple model for heat transfer in living tissue with self - regulation. The initial point of the model is the governing equations describing heat transfer in living tissue at the mesoscopic level,…
Elucidating the fitness measures optimized during the evolution of complex biological systems is a major challenge in evolutionary theory. We present experimental evidence and an analytical framework demonstrating how biochemical networks…
A common assumption in evolutionary thought is that adaptation drives an increase in biological complexity. However, the rules governing evolution of complexity appear more nuanced. Evolution is deeply connected to learning, where…
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…
Life is a nonequilibrium phenomenon: metabolism provides a continuous supply of energy that drives nearly all cellular processes. However, very little is known about how much energy different cellular processes use, i.e. their energetic…
Evolution is the process of optimal adaptation of biological populations to their living environments. This is expressed via the concept of fitness, defined as relative reproductive success. However, it has been pointed out that this…
Modern biological tools have made it possible to unequivocally demonstrate the deep relationship among species in terms of genes and basic molecular mechanisms. In addition, results from genetic, physical and physiological approaches…
Transport networks are typically optimized, either by evolutionary pressures in biological systems or by human design in engineered structures. In the case of systems such as the animal vasculature, the transport of fluids is hindered by…
In the present monograph we formulate a simple model for heat transfer in living tissue with self - regulation. The initial point of the model is the governing equations describing heat transfer in living tissue at the mesoscopic level,…
In the last decades, the interest to understand the connection between brain and body has grown notably. For example, in psychoneuroimmunology many studies associate stress, arising from many different sources and situations, to changes in…
Constraints on changes in expression levels across all cell components imposed by the steady growth of cells have recently been discussed both experimentally and theoretically. By assuming a small environmental perturbation and considering…
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…
Aging is thought to be a consequence of intrinsic breakdowns in how genetic information is processed. But mounting experimental evidence suggests that aging can be slowed. To help resolve this mystery, I derive a mortality equation which…
All life, including cells and artificial protocells, must integrate diverse molecules into a single unit in order to reproduce. Despite expected pressure to evolve a simple system with the fastest replication speed, the mechanism by which…