title: Insights into Biological Complexity from Simple Foundations.
abstract: We discuss an overtly "simple approach" to complex biological systems borrowing selectively from theoretical physics. The approach is framed by three maxims, and we show examples of its success in two different applications: investigating cellular robustness at the level of gene regulatory networks and quantifying rare events of DNA replication errors.
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, DD1 5EH, UK.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Albergante
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, DD1 5EH, UK.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, DD1 5EH, UK.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Palmer
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, DD1 5EH, UK. T.Newman@dundee.ac.uk.
authors.forename: T J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Newman
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004247:DNA / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000235:genetics; D004261:DNA Replication; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D014644:Genetic Variation; D006801:Humans; D008957:Models, Genetic; D049490:Systems Biology / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D004247:DNA
keywords: Big data; DNA replication; Gene regulatory networks; Probability theory; Simplicity; Theoretical physics