Abstract
In this paper we present a review of progress in addressing the challenge to understand and describe the vast complexity and multi-level organisation associated with biological systems. We begin with a review of past and current approaches, key lessons, and unresolved challenges, which require a new conceptual framework to address them. After summarizing the core of the problem, which is linked to computational complexity, we review recent developments within the theoretical framework of scale relativity, which offers new insights into the emergence of structure and function (at multiple scales), providing a new integrative approach to biological systems. The theoretical framework describes the critical role of thermodynamics and quantum vacuum fluctuations in the emergence of charge-induced macroscopic quantum fields (effectively a new quantum field theory) at multiple scales, which underpin a macroscopic quantum description of biological systems as a complex exemplar of condensed matter. The theory is validated through a new biomimetic experimental approach, which leads to the emergence of plant and individual cell-like structures with the intrinsic capacity to divide, differentiate and form multicellular structures. We discuss how this theoretical framework could be applied to extend our understanding of cardiac systems biology and physiology, and challenges such as cancer and neurodegenerative disease. We also consider the potential of these new insights to support a new approach to the development of emerging quantum technologies.
Highlights
The purpose of this review is to provide an update on progress made globally over the past decade in integrative systems biology, physiology and medicine, and in our theoretical and experimental research programme dedicated to the development of a scale-relative biology
The result is interesting from a number of different perspectives: (i) We see the emergence of the synthetic cell (Fig. 5c) as an experimental exemplar of closure of constraints, typically associated with a biological system [210]; (ii) Fig. 8b showing a division process, reflects the synthetic cell as an autopoietic system [211]; (iii) A chargeinduced fractal network represents an essential ingredient for the emergence of a coherent macroscopic quantum-like system that underpins autopoiesis, which could not have emerged from a classically ordered structure such as a liposome; (iv) With scale relativity, we have a clearly described physical theory and mathematical framework available to account for the experimental exemplars of closure of constraints and autopoiesis
There is growing evidence that this process is heavily regulated through changes in molecular and cellular networks of interactions, contributing to multiple types of inheritance [69,222]. It has been proposed [59] that living systems have the ability to organise themselves as the result of a conjunction occurring through the variable part of a mostly stable physical organisation, and the stable part of a network of small fluctuations, operating in a “biological spacetime” involving a variable number of biological dimensions, a conjecture that is consonant with the principles underlying scale and biological relativity [3,6] as well as the theory of organisms [50]
Summary
The purpose of this review is to provide an update on progress made globally over the past decade in integrative systems biology, physiology and medicine, and in our theoretical and experimental research programme dedicated to the development of a scale-relative biology. It builds upon a large corpus of previous research papers, reviews and books in which we introduced and discussed advances of this fast-growing research field and presented the rationale and motivation for exploring the scale-relativity theory framework in biology. 9 how we plan to apply the scale-relative biology framework to cardiac systems biology and physiology and provide in Sect.
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