Fluxes, Fluctuations and the Emergence of Form

RA4 will reveal physical principles of organization that underlie the living state of matter. This research avenue will stimulate and aid RA1-3 by integrating the discoveries of RA1-3 in a more general context. We will bring concepts of non-equilibrium statistical physics and of nonlinear dynamics to the study of living matter. How are energy and matter fluxes patterned in space and time during morphogenesis? How can we integrate metabolic processes in a general theory of active matter? How can structures robustly arise in the presence of fluctuations and perturbations? How can cells reliably make decisions in light of fluctuations, perturbations and uncertainty? How does the genome encode shape and form in space and time? Which mechanisms allow for variations of shapes? Research in RA4 will bring understanding of how energy and matter fluxes are patterned in space and time, how biological structures robustly arise in active matter in the presence of fluctuations and perturbations, and how the variability of shapes is encoded in the genome.