A Framework for Investigating Rules of Life by Establishing Zones of Influence

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-1-2021

Abstract

The incredible complexity of biological processes across temporal and spatial scales hampers defning common underlying mechanisms driving the patterns of life. However, recent advances in sequencing, big data analysis, machine learning, and molecular dynamics simulation have renewed the hope and urgency of fnding potential hidden rules of life. There currently exists no framework to develop such synoptic investigations. Some efforts aim to identify unifying rules of life across hierarchical levels of time, space, and biological organization, but not all phenomena occur across all the levels of these hierarchies. Instead of identifying the same parameters and rules across levels, we posit that each level of a temporal and spatial scale and each level of biological organization has unique parameters and rules that may or may not predict outcomes in neighboring levels. We defne this neighborhood, or the set of levels, across which a rule functions as the zone of influence. Here, we introduce the zone of influence framework and explain using three examples: (a) randomness in biology, where we use a Poisson process to describe processes from protein dynamics to DNA mutations to gene expressions, (b) island biogeography, and (c) animal coloration. The zone of in?uence framework may enable researchers to identify which levels are worth investigating for a particular phenomenon and reframe the narrative of searching for a unifying rule of life to the investigation of how, when, and where various rules of life operate.

DOI

10.1093/icb/icab169

Publication Title

Integrative and Comparative Biology

Volume Number

61

Issue Number

6

First Page

2095

Last Page

2108

ISSN

15407063

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS