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Functional Interdependence in Coupled Dissipative Structures: Physical Foundations of Biological Coordination

Coordination within and between organisms is one of the most complex abilities of living systems, requiring the concerted regulation of many physiological constituents, and this complexity can be particularly difficult to explain by appealing to physics. A valuable framework for understanding biolog...

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Autores principales: De Bari, Benjamin, Paxton, Alexandra, Kondepudi, Dilip K., Kay, Bruce A., Dixon, James A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8156455/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34063356
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e23050614
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author De Bari, Benjamin
Paxton, Alexandra
Kondepudi, Dilip K.
Kay, Bruce A.
Dixon, James A.
author_facet De Bari, Benjamin
Paxton, Alexandra
Kondepudi, Dilip K.
Kay, Bruce A.
Dixon, James A.
author_sort De Bari, Benjamin
collection PubMed
description Coordination within and between organisms is one of the most complex abilities of living systems, requiring the concerted regulation of many physiological constituents, and this complexity can be particularly difficult to explain by appealing to physics. A valuable framework for understanding biological coordination is the coordinative structure, a self-organized assembly of physiological elements that collectively performs a specific function. Coordinative structures are characterized by three properties: (1) multiple coupled components, (2) soft-assembly, and (3) functional organization. Coordinative structures have been hypothesized to be specific instantiations of dissipative structures, non-equilibrium, self-organized, physical systems exhibiting complex pattern formation in structure and behaviors. We pursued this hypothesis by testing for these three properties of coordinative structures in an electrically-driven dissipative structure. Our system demonstrates dynamic reorganization in response to functional perturbation, a behavior of coordinative structures called reciprocal compensation. Reciprocal compensation is corroborated by a dynamical systems model of the underlying physics. This coordinated activity of the system appears to derive from the system’s intrinsic end-directed behavior to maximize the rate of entropy production. The paper includes three primary components: (1) empirical data on emergent coordinated phenomena in a physical system, (2) computational simulations of this physical system, and (3) theoretical evaluation of the empirical and simulated results in the context of physics and the life sciences. This study reveals similarities between an electrically-driven dissipative structure that exhibits end-directed behavior and the goal-oriented behaviors of more complex living systems.
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spelling pubmed-81564552021-05-28 Functional Interdependence in Coupled Dissipative Structures: Physical Foundations of Biological Coordination De Bari, Benjamin Paxton, Alexandra Kondepudi, Dilip K. Kay, Bruce A. Dixon, James A. Entropy (Basel) Article Coordination within and between organisms is one of the most complex abilities of living systems, requiring the concerted regulation of many physiological constituents, and this complexity can be particularly difficult to explain by appealing to physics. A valuable framework for understanding biological coordination is the coordinative structure, a self-organized assembly of physiological elements that collectively performs a specific function. Coordinative structures are characterized by three properties: (1) multiple coupled components, (2) soft-assembly, and (3) functional organization. Coordinative structures have been hypothesized to be specific instantiations of dissipative structures, non-equilibrium, self-organized, physical systems exhibiting complex pattern formation in structure and behaviors. We pursued this hypothesis by testing for these three properties of coordinative structures in an electrically-driven dissipative structure. Our system demonstrates dynamic reorganization in response to functional perturbation, a behavior of coordinative structures called reciprocal compensation. Reciprocal compensation is corroborated by a dynamical systems model of the underlying physics. This coordinated activity of the system appears to derive from the system’s intrinsic end-directed behavior to maximize the rate of entropy production. The paper includes three primary components: (1) empirical data on emergent coordinated phenomena in a physical system, (2) computational simulations of this physical system, and (3) theoretical evaluation of the empirical and simulated results in the context of physics and the life sciences. This study reveals similarities between an electrically-driven dissipative structure that exhibits end-directed behavior and the goal-oriented behaviors of more complex living systems. MDPI 2021-05-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8156455/ /pubmed/34063356 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e23050614 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
De Bari, Benjamin
Paxton, Alexandra
Kondepudi, Dilip K.
Kay, Bruce A.
Dixon, James A.
Functional Interdependence in Coupled Dissipative Structures: Physical Foundations of Biological Coordination
title Functional Interdependence in Coupled Dissipative Structures: Physical Foundations of Biological Coordination
title_full Functional Interdependence in Coupled Dissipative Structures: Physical Foundations of Biological Coordination
title_fullStr Functional Interdependence in Coupled Dissipative Structures: Physical Foundations of Biological Coordination
title_full_unstemmed Functional Interdependence in Coupled Dissipative Structures: Physical Foundations of Biological Coordination
title_short Functional Interdependence in Coupled Dissipative Structures: Physical Foundations of Biological Coordination
title_sort functional interdependence in coupled dissipative structures: physical foundations of biological coordination
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8156455/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34063356
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e23050614
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