“Window Into Evolution” – Mathematicians Uncover Universal Explanatory
Framework

QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY MAY 6, 2023

Researchers have recently discovered fundamental molecular-level design
principles that help maintain important molecules within narrow
concentration ranges in biological systems, contributing to robustness and
survival. This ground-breaking research provides a universal framework for
understanding robust perfect adaptation (RPA) and could lead to fresh
approaches in tackling personalized medicine challenges like cancer drug
resistance, addiction, and autoimmune diseases.

*Mathematicians have uncovered a universal explanatory framework that
provides a “window into evolution.” This framework explains how molecules
interact with each other in adapting to changing conditions while still
maintaining tight control over essential properties that are crucial for
survival.*

According to Dr. Araujo from the *QUT School of Mathematical Sciences*
<https://scitechdaily.com/tag/queensland-university-of-technology/>, the
research results provide a blueprint for the creation of signalling
networks that are capable of adapting across all life forms and for the
design of synthetic biological systems.

“Our study considers a process called robust perfect adaptation (RPA)
whereby biological systems, from individual cells to entire organisms,
maintain important molecules within narrow concentration ranges despite
continually being bombarded with disturbances to the system,” Dr. Araujo
said.

“Until now, no one had a general way to explain how this vital process was
orchestrated at the molecular level through the vast, complex, often highly
intricate networks of chemical reactions among different types of
molecules, mostly proteins. We have now solved this problem, having
discovered fundamental molecular-level design principles that organize all
forms of biological complexity into robustness-promoting, and ultimately,
survival-promoting, chemical reaction structures.”

Dr. Araujo said they had found that collections of interacting molecules in
living systems cannot simply ‘transmit’ biochemical signals but must
actually make ‘computations’ on these signals.

“These complex intermolecular interactions must implement a special type of
regulation known as integral control – a design strategy known to engineers
for almost a century.

“However, signalling networks in nature are vastly different, having
evolved to rely on the physical interactions between discrete molecules. So,
nature’s ‘solutions’ operate through remarkable and highly intricate
collections of interactions, without engineering’s specially designed,
integral-computing components, and often without feedback loops.

“We show that molecular network structures use a form of integral control
in which multiple independent integrals, each with a very special and
simple structure, can collaborate to confer the capacity for adaptation on
specific molecules.

“Using an algebraic algorithm based on this finding, we have been able to
demonstrate the existence of embedded integrals in biologically important
chemical reaction networks whose ability to exhibit adaptation could never
before be explained by any systematic method.”

Professor Liotta said the quest to uncover the fundamental design
principles of biological systems throughout nature is considered to be one
of the most important and far-reaching grand challenges in the life
sciences.

“On the basis of this ground-breaking new research, RPA currently stands
alone as a keystone biological response for which there now exists a
universal explanatory framework.

“It’s a framework that imposes strict and inviolable design criteria on
arbitrarily large and complex networks, and one that now accounts for the
subtleties of intricate intermolecular interactions at the network
microscale.

“At a practical level, this discovery could provide a completely fresh
approach to tackle grand challenges in personalized medicine such as cancer
drug resistance, addiction, and autoimmune diseases.”

KR  : The science which said the methods of adaptation is hard to find out
viz the chemical reactions, being complicated, also says an algebraic
algorithm can calculate , so easily!!.

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