Spatial organization of subcellular systems

MALTE SCHMICK; HERNAN E. GRECCO; PHILIPPE I. H. BASTIAENS

Handbook of Systems Biology

Elsevier

Año: 2012; p. 1 - 1

Biological systems strive against entropy by consuming energy and transforming it into order reaching a balance is reached between influx of energy and the energy necessary to maintain a certain level of organization. This balance in which the system is apparently ?resting? can be defined as the state of the system. Take for example a mature multicellular organism that does not grow or develop although its cells keep dividing. When the external conditions change, however, so does the balance, and the organism needs to change as well. This adaptation requires the organism to sense and record a historical set of changes in environmental and internal conditions, while computing and applying changes to its own conditions to re-acquire proper balance, i.e. a new state. Sensing, recording, computing and applying changes are therefore essential functions of all living biological systems, using co-evolved sets of biochemical reactions immersed in a diffusive medium on a cellular scale.