SwissMAP Logo
Log in
  • About us
    • Organization
    • Professors
    • Senior Researchers
    • Postdocs
    • PhD Students
    • Alumni
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
    • Online Events
    • Videos
    • Newsletters
    • Press Coverage
    • Perspectives Journal
    • Interviews
  • Research
    • Basic Notions
    • Phase III Directions
    • Phases I & II Projects
    • Publications
    • SwissMAP Research Station
  • Awards, Visitors & Vacancies
    • Awards
    • Innovator Prize
    • Visitors
    • Vacancies
  • Outreach & Education
    • Masterclasses & Doctoral Schools
    • Mathscope
    • Maths Club
    • Athena Project
    • ETH Math Youth Academy
    • SPRING
    • Junior Euler Society
    • General Relativity for High School Students
    • Outreach Resources
    • Exhibitions
    • Previous Programs
    • Events in Outreach
    • News in Outreach
  • Equal Opportunities
    • Mentoring Program
    • Financial Support
    • SwissMAP Scholars
    • Events in Equal Opportunities
    • News in Equal Opportunities
  • Contact
    • Corporate Design
  • Basic Notions
  • Phase III Directions
  • Phases I & II Projects
  • Publications
  • SwissMAP Research Station

Dimensional Reduction in Complex Living Systems: Where, Why, and How

Jean-Pierre Eckmann, Tsvi Tlusty

18/6/21 Published in : BioEssays, e2100062

The unprecedented prowess of measurement techniques provides a detailed, multi-scale look into the depths of living systems. Understanding these avalanches of high-dimensional data -- by distilling underlying principles and mechanisms -- necessitates dimensional reduction. We propose that living systems achieve exquisite dimensional reduction, originating from their capacity to learn, through evolution and phenotypic plasticity, the relevant aspects of a non-random, smooth physical reality. We explain how geometric insights by mathematicians allow one to identify these genuine hallmarks of life and distinguish them from universal properties of generic data sets. We illustrate these principles in a concrete example of protein evolution, suggesting a simple general recipe that can be applied to understand other biological systems.

Entire article ArXiv

Phase I & II research project(s)

  • Quantum Systems
  • Field Theory
  • Statistical Mechanics

Non-Equilibrium Steady States for Networks of Oscillators

The CMB bispectrum from bouncing cosmologies

  • Leading house

  • Co-leading house


The National Centres of Competence in Research (NCCRs) are a funding scheme of the Swiss National Science Foundation

© SwissMAP 2023 - All rights reserved