Related papers: Self-assembled versus biological pattern formation…
An autocatalytic pattern matching polymer system is studied as an abstract model for chemical ecosystem evolution. Highly ordered populations with particular sequence patterns appear spontaneously out of a vast number of possible states.…
Self-organisation lies at the core of fundamental but still unresolved scientific questions, and holds the promise of de-centralised paradigms crucial for future technological developments. While self-organising processes have been…
Metabolism displays striking and robust regularities in the forms of modularity and hierarchy, whose composition may be compactly described. This renders metabolic architecture comprehensible as a system, and suggests the order in which…
It is often stated that there are no laws in biology, where everything is contingent and could have been otherwise, being solely the result of historical accidents. Furthermore, the customary introduction of fundamental biological entities…
We introduce a new model for large scale evolution and extinction in which species are organized into food chains. The system evolves by two processes: origination/speciation and extinction. In the model, extinction of a given species can…
Any search for present or past life beyond Earth should consider the initial processes and related environmental controls that might have led to its start. As on Earth, such an understanding lies well beyond how simple organic molecules…
Although it has been notoriously difficult to pin down precisely what it is that makes life so distinctive and remarkable, there is general agreement that its informational aspect is one key property, perhaps the key property. The unique…
Instances of critical-like characteristics in living systems at each organizational level as well as the spontaneous emergence of computation (Langton), indicate the relevance of self-organized criticality (SOC). But extrapolating complex…
All living organisms use the same genetic languages in their molecular biology machinery. They can be understood as the optimal solutions to the replication tasks involving DNA and proteins. These solutions perfectly fit the pattern…
Metabolism is a fascinating cell machinery underlying life and disease and genome-scale reconstructions provide us with a captivating view of its complexity. However, deciphering the relationship between metabolic structure and function…
Soil is a complex, dynamic material, with physical properties that depend on its biological content. We propose a cellular automaton model for self-organizing soil structure, where soil aggregates and serves as food for microbial species.…
Many mechanisms, functions and structures of life have been unraveled. However, the fundamental driving force that propelled chemical evolution and led to life has remained obscure. The 2nd law of thermodynamics, written as an equation of…
Galaxy formation is at the heart of our understanding of cosmic evolution. Although there is a consensus that galaxies emerged from the expanding matter background by gravitational instability of primordial fluctuations, a number of…
The dissertation extrapolates the theory of self-organization in biological organisms to sociopolitical self-organization, in human social systems. It is stated that the latter is the best way to organize human social systems, given their…
We look ahead from the frontiers of research on ice dynamics in its broadest sense; on the structures of ice, the patterns or morphologies it may assume, and the physical and chemical processes in which it is involved. We highlight open…
In a cell or microorganism the processes that generate mass, energy, information transfer, and cell fate specification are seamlessly integrated through a complex network of various cellular constituents and reactions. However, despite the…
The emergence of life from inanimate matter presents a thermodynamic challenge: the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates a global trend towards disorder, yet life constitutes localized pockets of profound organization. This paper presents…
How patterns and structures undergo symmetry breaking and self-organize within biological systems from initially homogeneous states is a key issue for biological development. The activator-inhibitor (AI) mechanism, derived from…
Since its inception six decades ago, astrobiology has diversified immensely to encompass several scientific questions including the origin and evolution of Terran life, the organic chemical composition of extraterrestrial objects, and the…
Recent evidence indicates that the abundance of recurring elementary interaction patterns in complex networks, often called subgraphs or motifs, carry significant information about their function and overall organization. Yet, the…