Cells seem to decode their fate through optimal information processing

This is super cool! People underestimate how insanely chaotic a cell is at a molecular level. Often diagrams show blobs cleanly interacting but the reality is more like the images linked here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mgl.scripps.edu&#x2F;people&#x2F;goodsell&#x2F;illustration&#x2F;public&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mgl.scripps.edu&#x2F;people&#x2F;goodsell&#x2F;illustration&#x2F;public&#x2F;</a><p>Everything touches everything. Everything is always moving around.<p>This work suggests that the cell has taken advantage of this enormous challenge. If everything is always in motion, that means you have trouble controlling things, but that gives you a chance to maximally sample your environment. This makes this sort of efficient data processing possible. Downstream are a number of mechanisms that help make sense of that signaling, denoising the chaos. One example from a lab I worked in briefly (old but still cool):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;pii&#x2F;S0092867411002431" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;pii&#x2F;S009286741...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;18599789" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;18599789</a>

I spent some time in the Gregor lab during grad school. I&#x27;m obviously biased but I think the work represents some of the most original happening right now in biophysics. These papers were extremely rewarding to read and represent almost a decade of work on part of many members of the lab.<p>For those interested, I recommend diving into some of the lab&#x27;s earlier work as well as the work of Bill Bialek, Thomas&#x27;s advisor, who formulated a lot of these theories for photon sensing in the eye decades ago.

These biological computers are intrinsically based on vibrations. The vibrations aren&#x27;t just a source of diffusion and Brownian motion; they cohere into meaningful harmonic structures. Alan Turing described morphogenesis in terms of inhibition and excitation loops, which gives rise to banding patterns due to oscilatory harmonics and resonances [1]. We are so accustomed to thinking about things in terms of discrete, separable parts, we have a hard time imagining emergent temporal structures. Living organisms, from cells to brains to cities, are composed of interacting waves and harmonic structures. (I&#x27;m emphasizing a hippie-style &quot;resonance and harmony&quot; language here because it really is so critical for understanding these systems.<p>[1] Yang, L., Dolnik, M., Zhabotinsky, A. M., &amp; Epstein, I. R. (2002). Spatial resonances and superposition patterns in a reaction-diffusion model with interacting Turing modes. Physical review letters, 88(20), 208303.

William Bialek is my favorite scientific speaker (he has some good ones on youtube). His depth in such a wide range of sciences and topics is remarkable.<p>I think Thomas Gregor has some of the most precise biological measurements at the single molecular level.<p>The combination of the theory and precision measurements in studying the fly embryo by these people have resulted in very unique and creative progress in the field. From what I hear when they first started this work, the old-school developmental biologists thought what they were doing was absurd. They have successfully put a much more quantitative perspective back into biology.

This reminds me of the work over at Levin lab.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ase.tufts.edu&#x2F;biology&#x2F;labs&#x2F;levin&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ase.tufts.edu&#x2F;biology&#x2F;labs&#x2F;levin&#x2F;</a>

Is there an information equivalent to gravity, e.g. some sort of gradient is formed that the cell simply follows like a bowling ball on a sheet?