Document Type

Paper

Publication Date

2019

Abstract

Today, humans as a species face significant global challenges: meeting the needs of an ever expanding human population for food and energy from limited land, water and other resources; finding ways to counter rapidly changing pathogens that become resistant to current treatments; adapting to climate change that is linked to more frequent flooding, drought, wildfires and temperature extremes; and reversing the deterioration of ecosystems associated with human induced alterations of the environment. Owing to its resilience and robustness, life in one form or another will likely persist, but it is unknown by what mechanisms or in what forms. Much is now known about the mechanisms of life, including the biochemical reactions of information and energy processing within microbial cells, programs that define the development and evolution of multi-cellular organisms, from worms to humans, and how interactions among diverse life forms contribute to ecosystem emergence and dynamics. Moreover, we now possess technologies to manipulate, observe, analyze and synthesize our understanding of model and non-model systems in controlled lab environments as well as in the field and encompassing up to the global scale. We have an abundance of in-depth data that if coalesced into user-accessible databases may enable scientists to understand systems in a broad sense, discovering overarching strategies used at different scales. But the big question remains: are there common rules that govern resilience and robustness across different levels of biological organization-- from molecules to ecosystems? The study of resilience and robustness is a transdisciplinary field that may be amenable to network science framework across levels of biological organization, where the one network at one scale (e.g., within cells) becomes a node in a network at a different scale (e.g., across cell populations). Moreover, scientists in the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology, and economics can contribute to and benefit from a central theory of biological robustness and resilience. There are many barriers to this paradigm shift. Engineers, computer scientists, and biologists in different research communities lack of a common language for describing what robustness or resilience mean across different levels of biological organization. In addition, there are many institutional and structural barriers that need to be overcome. For a unified theory of robustness and resilience to emerge, meaningful incentives to promote collaborative research must be implemented, traditional departmental barriers must be dismantled. Most importantly, science education from K-12 through the post-doctoral level must be re-designed to focus on problem-based scientific thinking that requires integration of knowledge from different scientific disciplines so that it becomes a common way of thinking for the next generation of scientists and innovators.

Download

Share

COinS