Should biology be left to the biologists?

[SW VandeCarr]

Living systems can repair themselves, at least to some degree.

Living systems also seem to require constant turnover of components- cells, proteins, etc.

OK. That's seems to be a good start. Both repair and maintenance can be thought of in terms of a system's ability to remain in a stable operating state. Both metabolism and replication at smaller scales are involved. Metabolism provides the energy for this. So we can have a system that maintains itself internally and makes copies of some of its components, but may not be able to copy itself in its entirety. So these systems would not qualify as life if we require living systems to make copies of themselves and evolve. Nevertheless such systems would be interesting, especially if they were able to maintain themselves indefinitely within a range of environmental parameters.

Interestingly, hurricanes are simple systems which show limited abilities to repair themselves. They maintain themselves over a short "lifetime" of up to two weeks by extracting energy from the environment, and they exhibit very identifiable structure and behavioral patterns. No one would suggest these things are alive, but they part of a class of systems known as dissipative structures in which some scientists also include living systems.

Individual organisms die, but by making copies of themselves individual living systems are in a sense operating as components in a larger system. That larger system might be a community of similar organisms or an even larger system which we might call an ecology. At this point, it becomes a matter of taste whether you want to call these larger systems "dissipative" if they can last for millions or even billions of years.

My point is that what we might call a living system might be better thought of as a component of a larger sustaining ecology and may be itself a sustaining ecology for a complex of subsystems which could also be called living systems such as individual cells in metazoa.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

I just read a nice essay that's somewhat relevant to the topic of the future of biology and how biologists should be doing research in the future. Here's a short snippet:

Conventionally, biologists have sought to understand life as it exists. Increasingly, however, from stem-cell reprogramming to microbial factories, researchers are describing what is and exploring what could be. An analogous shift occurred in physics and chemistry, especially in the nineteenth century. Like biology, these fields once focused on explaining observed natural processes or material, such as planetary motion or 'organic' molecules. Now they study physical and chemical principles that govern what can or cannot be, in natural and artificial systems, such as semiconductors and synthetic organic molecules.

The expansion of biology from a discipline that focuses on natural organisms to one that includes potential organisms will have three long-term effects. First, it will enlarge the community of biologists to include researchers with different assumptions and goals, such as engineers. Second, it will alter the way in which scientists address the fundamental problem of how biological systems work. Integrating reverse and forward engineering approaches will free biologists to uncover fundamental principles that explain, unify and extrapolate beyond mechanisms observed in specific model systems. Third, it will provide a new conceptual basis for teaching biology — one founded on stimulating inquiry from students as to how biological components and modules could be used to implement complex functions.

Elowitz and Lim. (2010) Build life to understand it. Nature 468: 889. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/468889a

 

[Andy Resnick]

Elowitz and Lim. (2010) Build life to understand it. Nature 468: 889. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/468889a

Thanks for the link- nice lego dude,also...

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Here's an interesting short article re a communication out of the U of Illinois,Urbana discussing self assembling charged latex spheres in a saline solution. They're called "Janus" spheres because they carry opposite charges on each side that alternately attract or repel their neighbors. Under the right conditions of salinity they will self assemble into complex structures including helices.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/self-asse...paign=97c0672014-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email

 

[Andy Resnick]

There are a lot of groups doing cool stuff like that, with all kinds of wacky particles- diblock copolymers, colloidosomes, lithographically patterned nanoparticles, and even DNA (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7245/abs/nature08016.html)

 

[SW VandeCarr]

There are a lot of groups doing cool stuff like that, with all kinds of wacky particles- diblock copolymers, colloidosomes, lithographically patterned nanoparticles, and even DNA (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7245/abs/nature08016.html)

Thanks Andy. I'm not familiar with DNA's uses in nanotechnology. However, I have read about self-replicating nanorobots. I passed it off as interesting but not likely in the near term. Perhaps I'm wrong. What seems to be becoming clear is that the basic components of possible bio-like systems can be quite diverse.