精东传媒

Life

Life may be less chaotic than we thought, say physicists

According to a long-standing idea, life exists at the edge of chaos, meaning it is sensitive enough to respond to small environmental changes. But an analysis of processes that occur inside cells challenges the idea

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

15 December 2023

Escherichia coli

Modelling the biology of Escherichia coli bacteria suggests life is not as chaotic as we had thought

Ezume Images/Shutterstock

Life may not exist at the 鈥渆dge of chaos鈥 after all. The long-standing belief has been challenged by computer simulations of dozens of processes within cells.

A hallmark of chaotic systems is that a small disturbance can lead to an outsized effect. The famous butterfly effect offers a classic example, where a flap of an insect鈥檚 wings is proposed to cause a storm many kilometres away. Since the late 1980s, researchers have believed that life has evolved to exist…

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