Search results for "Living systems"

Artificial Biosystems by Printing Biology

2020

The continuous progress of printing technologies over the past 20 years has fueled the development of a plethora of applications in materials sciences, flexible electronics, and biotechnologies. More recently, printing methodologies have started up to explore the world of Artificial Biology, offering new paradigms in the direct assembly of Artificial Biosystems (small condensates, compartments, networks, tissues, and organs) by mimicking the result of the evolution of living systems and also by redesigning natural biological systems, taking inspiration from them. This recent progress is reported in terms of a new field here defined as Printing Biology, resulting from the intersection betwee…

Reinforcement learning in synthetic gene circuits.

2020

Synthetic gene circuits allow programming in DNA the expression of a phenotype at a given environmental condition. The recent integration of memory systems with gene circuits opens the door to their adaptation to new conditions and their re-programming. This lays the foundation to emulate neuromorphic behaviour and solve complex problems similarly to artificial neural networks. Cellular products such as DNA or proteins can be used to store memory in both digital and analog formats, allowing cells to be turned into living computing devices able to record information regarding their previous states. In particular, synthetic gene circuits with memory can be engineered into living systems to al…

Paving the way for synthetic biology-based bioremediation in Europe

2009

Synthetic biology (SB) has a dual definition. It is both the design and construction of new biological parts, devices and systems, and also the re‐design of existing, natural systems for useful purposes. The latter field is maybe one of the major challenges within this discipline, since the promising prospect that biological systems may be used as biomachines will certainly be exploited in the near future. Synthetic biology has challenging conceptual possibilities (Moya et al., 2009a) and impressive progress has already been made in biotechnology following SB approaches (de Lorenzo and Danchin, 2008). Much more is expected in the near future from current efforts aiming to make synthetic gen…

Out‐of‐Equilibrium (Supra)molecular Systems and Materials: An Introduction

2021

The Dialectics of Free Energy Minimization

2019

Karl Friston’s free energy minimization has been received with great enthusiasm. With good reason: it not only makes the bold claim to a unifying theory of the brain, but it is presented as an a priori principle applicable to living systems in general. In this article, we set out to show how the breadth of scope of Friston’s framework converges with the dialectics of Georg Hegel. Through an appeal to the work of Catherine Malabou, we aim to demonstrate how Friston not only reinvigorates Hegelian dialectics from the perspective of neuroscience, but that the implicit alignment with Hegel necessitates a reading of free energy minimization from the perspective of Hegel’s speculative philosophy.…

Biomineralix (COST action TD0903), 2009-2014: an overview.

2015

Biomineralization is the process by which living systems produce minerals. At theEuropean scale, this particular scientific field associates researchers of diverse horizons,ranging from zoology, mineralogy, palaeontology, and environmental sciences to materialssciences, dentistry and bone surgery. In this context, the COST Action TD0903, also referredas Biomineralix, was set up in November 2009 under the auspices of the COST Office inBrussels. This scientific network was active during four and half years, until May 2014. Itassociated 17 European countries, and a total of 29 laboratories. Its main objectives weremultiple: 1. To promote biochemical and proteomic research on the biomineralisat…

A universal definition of life: autonomy and open-ended evolution.

2004

Life is a complex phenomenon that not only requires individual self-producing and self- sustaining systems but also a historical-collective organization of those individual systems, which brings about characteristic evolutionary dynamics. On these lines, we propose to define univer- sally living beings as autonomous systems with open-ended evolution capacities, and we claim that all such systems must have a semi-permeable active boundary (membrane), an energy trans- duction apparatus (set of energy currencies) and, at least, two types of functionally interdependent macromolecular components (catalysts and records). The latter is required to articulate a 'phenotype- genotype' decoupling that…

What Symbionts Teach us about Modularity

2013

The main goal of Synthetic Biology is to apply engineering principles to biotechnology in order to make life easier to engineer. These engineering principles include modularity: decoupling of complex systems into smaller, orthogonal subsystems that can be used in a range of different applications. The successful use of modules in engineering is expected to be reproduced in synthetic biological systems. But the difficulties experienced up to date with synthetic biology approaches question the short-term feasibility of designing life. Considering the “engineerable” nature of life, here we discuss the existence of modularity in natural living systems, particularly in symbiotic interactions, an…

Intelligibility in microbial complex systems: Wittgenstein and the score of life

2012

Knowledge in microbiology is reaching an extreme level of diversification and complexity, which paradoxically results in a strong reduction in the intelligibility of microbial life. In our days, the “score of life” metaphor is more accurate to express the complexity of living systems than the classic “book of life.” Music and life can be represented at lower hierarchical levels by music scores and genomic sequences, and such representations have a generational influence in the reproduction of music and life. If music can be considered as a representation of life, such representation remains as unthinkable as life itself. The analysis of scores and genomic sequences might provide mechanistic…

Concept of Client-Server Environment for Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation of Living Systems

2015

In the paper a concept for integrated and simple-to-use agent-based modeling and simulation environment is presented. The modeling environment allows simulating massive agent-based systems. Modeling environment itself is not domain specific, but it is expandable and allows creating domain-specific models. Hierarchical environment structure is supported. Individual agents could evolve by its individual path and pace. We use the General Living Systems theory as a reference model to check whether proposed modeling and simulation environment may also be used to describe models of living systems that are most complex systems around. The main concepts of proposed modeling environment such as agen…