Evolution of Reliable and Robust Regulatory Control

可靠、稳健的监管控制的演变

• 批准号: 0822399
• 负责人: Steven Frank
• 金额: $ 35.77万
• 依托单位: University of California-Irvine
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-01-01 至 2013-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0822399&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Evolution; Reliable; Robust; Regulatory; Control

Organisms are designed to be reliable and to deal robustly with unexpected changes in the environment. Like machines designed by engineers, the reliability and robustness of organisms is far from perfect. In engineering terms, machines that last a very long time and handle a wide variety of unexpected situations are very expensive and often poorly suited to their tasks - thus, engineers design with both costs and benefits in mind. This project examines the same sorts of design tradeoffs in biological terms. For example, how have organisms been designed with regard to reliability and robustness? How have the tradeoffs between costs and benefits been resolved in biological design? This work will study biological examples of breakdown and repair from these design perspectives. The methods include mathematical and computer models to study the problems of biological design coupled with synthesis of real-life examples of breakdown, such as cancer, aging, and, molecularly, the smaller-scale components that make organisms work. These studies will result in improved understanding of biological reliability and robustness. That understanding will have broader impacts by providing insight into when and why breakdown occurs - the fundamental basis of disease and aging.

生物被设计成是可靠的，能够强有力地应对环境中意想不到的变化。就像工程师设计的机器一样，生物的可靠性和健壮性远非完美。在工程术语中，使用时间很长、处理各种意外情况的机器非常昂贵，而且往往不适合它们的任务——因此，工程师在设计时要考虑成本和收益。这个项目从生物学的角度考察了同样的设计权衡。例如，生物在可靠性和健壮性方面是如何设计的？在生物设计中，成本和收益之间的权衡是如何解决的？这项工作将从这些设计角度研究破坏和修复的生物学例子。这些方法包括数学和计算机模型，以研究生物设计问题，并结合现实生活中分解的例子，如癌症、衰老，以及分子上使生物体工作的较小规模的组成部分。这些研究将有助于提高对生物可靠性和稳健性的理解。这种理解将产生更广泛的影响，因为它可以洞察到疾病和衰老的根本基础——神经衰竭发生的时间和原因。