Francesco Mosconi et al 2008 Nonlinearity 21 T131 doi:10.1088/0951-7715/21/8/T03
Francesco Mosconi, Thomas Julou, Nicolas Desprat, Deepak Kumar Sinha, Jean-François Allemand, Vincent Croquette and David Bensimon
Show affiliationsDriven by a deluge of data, biology is undergoing a transition to a more quantitative science. Making sense of the data, building new models, asking the right questions and designing smart experiments to answer them are becoming ever more relevant. In this endeavour, nonlinear approaches can play a fundamental role. The biochemical reactions that underlie life are very often nonlinear. The functional features exhibited by biological systems at all levels (from the activity of an enzyme to the organization of a colony of ants, via the development of an organism or a functional module like the one responsible for chemotaxis in bacteria) are dynamically robust. They are often unaffected by order of magnitude variations in the dynamical parameters, in the number or concentrations of actors (molecules, cells, organisms) or external inputs (food, temperature, pH, etc). This type of structural robustness is also a common feature of nonlinear systems, exemplified by the fundamental role played by dynamical fixed points and attractors and by the use of generic equations (logistic map, Fisher–Kolmogorov equation, the Stefan problem, etc.) in the study of a plethora of nonlinear phenomena. However, biological systems differ from these examples in two important ways: the intrinsic stochasticity arising from the often very small number of actors and the role played by evolution. On an evolutionary time scale, nothing in biology is frozen. The systems observed today have evolved from solutions adopted in the past and they will have to adapt in response to future conditions. The evolvability of biological system uniquely characterizes them and is central to biology. As the great biologist T Dobzhansky once wrote: 'nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution'.
87.23.Kg Dynamics of evolution
87.15.H- Dynamics of biomolecules
05.45.-a Nonlinear dynamics and nonlinear dynamical systems
92C40 Biochemistry, molecular biology
92D15 Problems related to evolution
92B05 General biology and biomathematics
92C17 Cell movement (chemotaxis, etc.)
34A34 Nonlinear equations and systems, general
92C45 Kinetics in biochemical problems (pharmacokinetics, enzyme kinetics, etc.) (See also 80A30)
Issue 8 (August 2008)
Received 21 April 2008
Published 10 July 2008
Francesco Mosconi et al 2008 Nonlinearity 21 T131
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