Evolutionary models for simple biosystems

TL;DR

This paper explores how evolutionary processes lead to complex biological structures and emphasizes the role of network organization across different levels of life, drawing parallels with other self-organizing systems.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for understanding the organizational levels of life and highlights the emergence of network structures in biological evolution.

Findings

Evolutionary development explains complex biological structures.

Self-organization occurs in out-of-equilibrium systems.

Network structures are fundamental in biological systems.

Abstract

The concept of evolutionary development of structures constituted a \emph{real} revolution in biology: it was possible to understand how the very complex structures of life can arise in an out-of-equilibrium system. The investigation of such systems has shown that indeed, systems under a flux of energy or matter can self-organize into complex patterns, think for instance to Rayleigh-Bernard convection, Liesegang rings, patterns formed by granular systems under shear. Following this line, one could characterize life as a state of matter, characterized by the slow, continuous process that we call evolution. In this paper we try to identify the organizational level of life, that spans several orders of magnitude from the elementary constituents to whole ecosystems. Although similar structures can be found in other contexts like ideas (memes) in neural systems and self-replicating elements (computer viruses, worms, etc.) in computer systems, we shall concentrate on biological evolutionary structure, and try to put into evidence the role and the emergence of network structure in such systems.