Related papers: Origin of complexity in multicellular organisms
The spatial character of territorial systems plays a crucial role in the emergence of their complexities. This contribution aims at illustrating to what extent different types of complexities can be exhibited in models of such systems. We…
Current analyses of genomes from numerous species show that the diversity of organism's functional and behavioral characters is not proportional to the number of genes that encode the organism. We investigate the hypothesis that the…
Even when concepts similar to emergence have been used since antiquity, we lack an agreed definition. However, emergence has been identified as one of the main features of complex systems. Most would agree on the statement ``life is…
Species or population that proliferate faster than others become dominant in numbers. Catalysis allows catalytic sets within a molecular reaction network to dominate the non catalytic parts of the network by processing most of the available…
The reproduction of a living cell requires a repeatable set of chemical events to be properly coordinated. Such events define a replication cycle, coupling the growth and shape change of the cell membrane with internal metabolic reactions.…
Systems of dynamical interactions between competing species can be used to model many complex systems, and can be mathematically described by {\em random} networks. Understanding how patterns of activity arise in such systems is important…
We construct a simple model of a proto-cell that simulates a stochastic dynamics of abstract chemicals on a two-dimensional lattice. We assume that chemicals catalyze their reproduction through interaction with each other, and that between…
The well-defined but intricate course of time evolution exhibited by many naturally occurring phenomena suggests some source of dynamic order sustaining it. In spite of its obviousness as a problem, it has remained absent from the…
Continuing generation of novelty, complexity, and adaptation are well-established as core aspects of open-ended evolution. However, it has yet to be firmly established to what extent these phenomena are coupled and by what means they…
Biological systems, from a cell to the human brain, are inherently complex. A powerful representation of such systems, described by an intricate web of relationships across multiple scales, is provided by complex networks. Recently, several…
The network concept is increasingly used for the description of complex systems. Here we summarize key aspects of the evolvability and robustness of the hierarchical network-set of macromolecules, cells, organisms, and ecosystems. Listing…
This paper presents a real-time simulation involving ''protozoan-like'' cells that evolve by natural selection in a physical 2D ecosystem. Selection pressure is exerted via the requirements to collect mass and energy from the surroundings…
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…
Phenotypic variation is a hallmark of cellular physiology. Metabolic heterogeneity, in particular, underpins single-cell phenomena such as microbial drug tolerance and growth variability. Much research has focussed on transcriptomic and…
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…
Living organisms have some common structures, chemical reactions and molecular structures. The organisms consist of cells with cell division, they have homochirality of protein and carbohydrate units, and metabolism, and genetics, and they…
When a large number of similar entities interact among each other and with their environment at a low scale, unexpected outcomes at higher spatio-temporal scales might spontaneously arise. This nontrivial phenomenon, known as emergence,…
Inside every living cell is the cytoplasm: a fluid mixture of thousands of different macromolecules, predominantly proteins. This mixture is where most of the biochemistry occurs that enables living cells to function, and it is perhaps the…
We study the dynamics of proliferating cell collectives whose microscopic constituents' growth is inhibited by macroscopic growth-induced stress. Discrete particle simulations of a growing collective show the emergence of concentric-ring…
Complex macroscopic behaviour can arise in many-body systems with only very simple elements as a consequence of the combination of competition and inhomogeneity. This paper attempts to illustrate how statistical physics has driven this…