Physics Frontier Center for Living Systems

生命系统不断探索新的非平衡结构，并从它们在相空间中的特殊位置适应不断变化的环境。这种开放式的适应能力使生物能够从化学物种的原始炖锅中出现，并发展出自我复制和生理功能多样化的途径，以应对不断变化的环境条件。我们对生命物质的理解的一个重大差距在于我们对生命系统如何适应、学习和进化新功能的认识有限。这个物理前沿中心（PFC）奖旨在通过在芝加哥大学建立一个生命系统中心（CLS）来解决这一差距。CLS的主要目标是开发适应复杂系统的一般框架。通过PFC奖项，CLS将专注于创建框架，以了解跨越长度和时间尺度的生命系统的适应性。这一努力需要在致力于理解非平衡系统中的信息处理和记忆存储的新科学领域取得进展。为了实现其目标，CLS将通过各种中心主导的活动，包括研讨会、种子基金、外部合作和建立共享设施，促进不同科学界之间的合作和跨学科研究。CLS将通过实施旨在加速物理教育文化变革的多方面方法来促进物理教育的进步，以培养未来的物理劳动力并促进该领域的多样性。CLS将制定招聘和科学推广计划，让代表性不足的群体参与进来，并在物理社区培养有效的培训文化。CLS的研究活动分为三个方面。第一个重点是了解在几十亿年的时间尺度上进行的进化过程如何构建能够在更短的时间尺度上适应的组件。第二个研究领域将探索控制细胞和多细胞组织的形状和运动的机械化学动力系统的本质。第三个研究领域试图将从前两个研究领域收集的机械和物理见解结合起来，以揭示复杂系统中的计算是如何完成的。这就提取出了该中心的主要愿景：了解相互作用强烈的异质生物系统如何进行计算，使它们能够适应大范围时间和空间尺度上的复杂输入。种子基金机制将用于探索从生命系统收集的想法如何推进非生命系统的研究，包括非平衡物质，开放量子系统和光子学。该物理前沿中心奖由数学和物理科学理事会物理部、生物科学理事会分子和细胞生物科学部以及综合有机系统部共同资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Living systems continually explore new out-of-equilibrium configurations and adapt to changing environments from their special perch in phase space. This open-ended adaptive ability has enabled living matter to emerge from a primordial stew of chemical species and develop pathways for self-replication and diversification of physiological function in response to ever-changing environmental conditions. A significant gap in our understanding of living matter lies in our limited knowledge of how living systems adapt, learn, and evolve new functions. This Physics Frontiers Center (PFC) award aims to address this gap by establishing a Center for Living Systems (CLS) at the University of Chicago. The primary objective of the CLS is to develop general frameworks for adaptation in complex systems. Through the PFC award, the CLS will focus on creating frameworks to understand adaptation in living systems that span length and time scales. This endeavor necessitates progress in the new field of science dedicated to understanding information processing and memory storage in far-from-equilibrium systems. To achieve its goals, the CLS will facilitate collaboration and interdisciplinary research among diverse scientific communities through various Center-led activities, including workshops, seed funding, external collaborations, and the establishment of Shared Facilities. The CLS will contribute to the advancement of Physics education by implementing a multi-faceted approach aimed at accelerating culture change within Physics education to train the future Physics workforce and promote diversity within the field. The CLS will develop recruitment and science outreach programs to involve under-represented groups and foster effective training culture in Physics communities. The CLS research activities are organized into three areas. The first focuses on understanding how evolutionary processes that play out on the billions-of-years timescale build components that can adapt on much shorter time scales. The second research area will explore the nature of the mechanochemical dynamical systems that control the shape and motion of cells and multicellular tissue. The third research area seeks to unite the mechanistic and physical insights into adaptation gleaned from the first two research areas to reveal how computation is done in complex systems. This distills out the primary vision of the center: to learn how strongly interacting, heterogeneous biological systems perform computations that make them adaptable to complex inputs over a wide range of time and spatial scales. A seed funding mechanism will be used to explore how ideas gleaned from living systems can advance research in non-living systems, including non-equilibrium matter, open quantum systems and photonics.This Physics Frontiers Centers award is co-funded by the Division of Physics within the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate, and the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences and the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems within the Directorate for Biological Sciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.