Laboratoire JOLIOT-CURIE - Charles Auffray, Laurent Nottale

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Accueil du site > Animations Scientifiques > Séminaires 2011 > Charles Auffray, Laurent Nottale — Systems Biology and Scale Relativity

Charles Auffray, Laurent Nottale — Systems Biology and Scale Relativity

Speakers :

Charles Auffray, Génomique Fonctionnelle et Biologie Systémique pour la Santé, CNRS - Université Pierre et Marie Curie- Paris VI, Villejuif

Laurent Nottale, Laboratoire Univers et Théories (LUTH), Observatoire de Paris, Meudon

When :

Mercredi 2 Mars à 11h

Where :

C023 (RDC LR6 côté Centre Blaise Pascal)

Title :

Systems Biology and Scale Relativity

Abstract :

Background : Systems approaches in biology are as old as physiology founded by William Harvey (Auffray and Noble Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2009, 10, 1658-1669).

Discussion : Two conjectures for systems biology on stochasticity and biological space-time (Auffray et al. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A 2003, 361:1125-1139).

“We conjecture that biological systems self-organize because they operate as a conjunction between the relatively variable part of a stable organization and the relatively stable part of a chaotic network of fluctuations, and in a space with a changing number of dimensions : biological space-time.”

Question 1 : is it possible to complement the four Cartesian precepts of objectivity, reductionism, causality and exhaustivity with the four systemic precepts of contextualisation, relatedness, conditionality and pertinence ? We will argue that this is a necessary condition for systems approaches to biological systems to succeed.

Question 2 : what is the nature of the chaotic network of fluctuations in self-organizing systems ? We will argue that it is an intrinsic and fundamental property that plays a key role in driving the behaviour of biological systems, not simply “noise”.

Question 3 : can biological space-time be formalized in the scale relativity framework ? We will discuss the extension of the principle of relativity to scales, and how its associated mathematical tools can help modelling and understanding biological systems, and resolve theoretically and practically the problem of integration across multiple scales and levels of organisation in biological systems (Auffray and Nottale, Progr Biophys Mol Biol 2008, 97:79-114 ; Nottale and Auffray Progr Biophys Mol Biol 2008, 97:115-157).

References and abstracts of the work cited are available with the PDF of the outline to the talk :