Degeneracy and complexity in biological systems

AUTOR(ES)

Edelman, Gerald M.

FONTE

The National Academy of Sciences

RESUMO

Degeneracy, the ability of elements that are structurally different to perform the same function or yield the same output, is a well known characteristic of the genetic code and immune systems. Here, we point out that degeneracy is a ubiquitous biological property and argue that it is a feature of complexity at genetic, cellular, system, and population levels. Furthermore, it is both necessary for, and an inevitable outcome of, natural selection.

Documentos Relacionados

• Measures of degeneracy and redundancy in biological networks
• Evolution of biological complexity
• Self-organized complexity in the physical, biological, and social sciences
• Finding simplicity in complexity: general principles of biological and nonbiological organization
• Understanding the complexity in low dimensional systems