Biocomplexity
- Researchers
- Problem
- Research
- Benefits
- Early Successes
Biocomplexity Video - Nigel Goldenfeld (DivX Player Needed, download here)
Researchers
Faculty: Nigel D. Goldenfeld (Theme Leader, Physics), Bruce W. Fouke (Geology), Wen-Tso Liu (Civil and Environmental Engineering), Zaida (Zan) A. Luthey-Schulten (Chemistry), Roderick I. Mackie (Animal Sciences), Gary J. Olsen (Microbiology), Nathan D. Price (Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering), Rachel J. Whitaker (Microbiology), Carl R. Woese (Microbiology)
Affiliates: Elbert Branscomb (Physics), Isaac K. O. Cann (Animal Sciences), Karin A. Dahmen (Physics) Lee DeVille (Mathematics), Ido Golding (Physics), Jay E. Mittenthal (Cell and Developmental Biology), Yoshitsugu Oono (Physics), Abigail A. Salyers (Microbiology)
Problem
Biocomplexity arises when the collective behavior of a biological system overwhelms the behavior of the individual components of the system. For example, microorganisms strongly influence and are influenced by the biogeochemical processes in their environment. They communicate by quorum sensing, as well as through exchange of genetic components. The resulting system-wide behavior requires treatment of all components together, ranging from the genome, through the cellular and community structure, to the ecosystem level. A snapshot of such a system reveals structure that can only be fully understood from understanding its development over evolutionary time.
The Biocomplexity Research Theme brings together a team of microbiologists, geologists, physicists, and engineers to develop novel approaches to microbial ecology, evolution and systems biology.
Research
The theme has two major conceptual projects underway to explore the origin of life and how it evolved from primordial geochemistry, and the evolution of the cell’s translation apparatus. The theme’s ecology research is focusing primarily on microbes, because they constitute well over half the Earth’s biomass and form the foundation for all known ecosystems.
Model systems include:
- The role of microbial activity in creating geological patterns at Yellowstone National Park’s geothermal hot springs
- Diseases of complex origin in corals
- The ecology of the gut
- The dynamics of intracellular networks
- The ecology of soil microbes
Benefits
The ecological issues addressed in the Biocomplexity Research Theme could have an impact in areas such as bioremediation of toxic waste, energy production, and soil improvement and stabilization, while the biomedical implications of this research may include new drug therapies and an improved response to antibiotic resistance.
Early Successes
The theme has been funded through the National Science Foundation Frontiers in Integrative Biological Research (NSF FIBR) program, and through the Department of Energy’s Genomes to Life program. The FIBR project, in collaboration with other institutions, is researching the early evolution of life up to the emergence of the genetic code. The DOE project explores the way in which the detailed components of translation evolved. Several major publications include studies of the influence of horizontal gene transfer on the evolutionary dynamics of the genetic code and the identification of evolutionary pathways for tRNA-Cys molecules; in both cases, the results shed light on the history of life before the root of the universal phylogenetic tree.
