Related papers: Why life is hot
Through extensive studies of dynamical system modeling cellular growth and reproduction, we find evidence that complexity arises in multicellular organisms naturally through evolution. Without any elaborate control mechanism, these systems…
An imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure will lead to a change in body weight (mass) and body composition (fat and lean masses). A quantitative understanding of the processes involved, which currently remains lacking, will…
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…
We show that dynamical gain modulation of neurons' stimulus response is described as an information-theoretic cycle that generates entropy associated with the stimulus-related activity from entropy produced by the modulation. To articulate…
Natural selection has shaped the evolution of cells and multi-cellular organisms such that social cooperation can often be preferred over an individualistic approach to metabolic regulation. This paper extends a framework for dynamic…
We define a \emph{thermal network}, which is a network where the flow functionality of a node depends upon its temperature. This model is inspired by several types of real-life networks, and generalizes some conventional network models…
The major biochemical networks of the living cell, the network of interacting genes and the network of biochemical reactions, are highly interdependent, however, they have been studied mostly as separate systems so far. In the last years an…
Macroevolution is considered as a problem of stochastic dynamics in a system with many competing agents. Evolutionary events (speciations and extinctions) are triggered by fitness records found by random exploration of the agents' fitness…
On the one hand, the dissipated heat of a thermodynamic work extraction process upper bounds the non-predictive information, which the associated system encodes about its environment. Thus, emergent information processing capabilities can…
The concept of fitness as a measure for a species's success in natural selection is central to the theory of evolution. We here investigate how reproduction rates which are not constant but vary in response to environmental fluctuations,…
Enzymes have been recently found to exhibit enhanced diffusion due to their catalytic activities. A recent experiment [C. Riedel et al., Nature 517, 227 (2015)] has found evidence that suggests this phenomenon might be controlled by the…
``The purpose of life is to obtain knowledge, use it to live with as much satisfaction as possible, and pass it on with improvements and modifications to the next generation.'' This may sound philosophical, and the interpretation of words…
Elucidating the architecture and dynamics of large scale genetic regulatory networks of cells is an important goal in systems biology. We study the system level dynamical properties of the genetic network of Escherichia coli that regulates…
In evolutionary algorithms, the fitness of a population increases with time by mutating and recombining individuals and by a biased selection of more fit individuals. The right selection pressure is critical in ensuring sufficient…
A fundamental goal of microbial ecology is to understand what determines the diversity, stability, and structure of microbial ecosystems. The microbial context poses special conceptual challenges because of the strong mutual influences…
We introduce a simple model, a binary mixture of patchy particles, which has been designed to form a gel upon heating. Due to the specific nature of the particle interactions, notably the number and geometry of the patches as well as their…
Metabolic networks perform some of the most fundamental functions in living cells, including energy transduction and building block biosynthesis. While these are the best characterized networks in living systems, understanding their…
Life is a complex biological phenomenon represented by numerous chemical, physical and biological processes performed by a biothermodynamic system/cell/organism. Both living organisms and inanimate objects are subject to aging, a biological…
The empirical evidence suggests that key accumulation decisions and risky choices associated with economic development depend, at least in part, on economic preferences such as willingness to take risk and patience. This paper studies…
While evolution has inspired algorithmic methods of heuristic optimisation, little has been done in the way of using concepts of computation to advance our understanding of salient aspects of biological phenomena. We argue that under…