Directed self-assembly, genomic assembly complexity and the formation of biological structure, or, what are the genes for nacre?
Biology uses dynamical mechanisms of selforganization and self-assembly of materials, but it also choreographs and directs these processes. The difference between abiotic self-assembly and a biological process is rather like the difference between setting up and running an experiment to make a mater...
| Autor: | |
|---|---|
| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2016 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) |
| Repositorio: | DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:digital.csic.es:10261/362694 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/362694 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Complexity DNA Information Self-assembly Self-organization |
| Sumario: | Biology uses dynamical mechanisms of selforganization and self-assembly of materials, but it also choreographs and directs these processes. The difference between abiotic self-assembly and a biological process is rather like the difference between setting up and running an experiment to make a material remotely compared with doing it in one's own laboratory: with a remote experiment-say on the International Space Station-everything must be set up beforehand to let the experiment run 'hands off', but in the laboratory one can intervene at any point in a 'hands-on' approach. It is clear that the latter process, of directed self-assembly, can allow much more complicated experiments and produce far more complex structures than self-assembly alone. This control over self-assembly in biology is exercised at certain key waypoints along a trajectory and the process may be quantified in terms of the genomic assembly complexity of a biomaterial. |
|---|