title: An engineering viewpoint on biological robustness.
abstract: In his splendid article "Can a biologist fix a radio?--or, what I learned while studying apoptosis," Y. Lazebnik argues that when one uses the right tools, similarity between a biological system, like a signal transduction pathway, and an engineered system, like a radio, may not seem so superficial. Here I advance this idea by focusing on the notion of robustness as a unifying lens through which to view complexity in biological and engineered systems. I show that electronic amplifiers and gene expression circuits share remarkable similarities in their dynamics and robustness properties. I explore robustness features and limitations in biology and engineering and highlight the role of negative feedback in shaping both.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETH Zürich, Switzerland. mustafa.khammash@bsse.ethz.ch.
authors.forename: Mustafa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Khammash
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000669:Amplifiers, Electronic; D000818:Animals; D004738:Engineering; D004867:Equipment Design; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D006801:Humans; D033183:Interdisciplinary Communication