Anapedesis: Implications and Applications of Bio-Structural Robustness

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of anapedesis, a measure of bio-structural robustness, emphasizing its importance in biological resilience, disease, evolution, and potential for computational and experimental study.

Contribution

It defines anapedesis as a scale-independent property of biological structures to deform and recover, integrating structure-function relationships into a unified framework.

Findings

Structural robustness is fundamental in biomedicine.

Failure of robustness can lead to pathological conditions.

Anapedesis may have been a key factor in evolution.

Abstract

Here we develop an approach to bio-structural robustness integrated with structure-function relationship in a unified conceptual and methodological framework, and envision its study using adequate computational and experimental methods. To distinguish this structural robustness from the abstract organizational robustness of systems, we call it anapedesis, and define it as the scale-independent property of biological objects, from biomolecules to organisms, to deform and recover while minimizing and/or repairing the damage produced by stretch. We propose to study the consequences of deformation of biological objects closer to their structural and/or functional failure than previously considered relevant. We show that structural robustness is present as a basic principle in many facets of biomedicine: many pathological conditions may derive from the failure of molecules, cells and their higher-order assemblies to maintain robustness against deformation. Furthermore, structural robustness could have been the key selective criterion during pre-biotic evolution and afterwards, and its universality can be demonstrated by modeling using genetic algorithms. Thus, the specific investigation of bio-structural robustness as anapedesis could help the solving of fundamental problems of biology and medicine.