Mindscape 251 | Rosemary Braun on Uncovering Patterns in Biological Complexity

Patreon: / seanmcarroll
Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: www.preposterousuniverse.com/...
Biological organisms are paradigmatic emergent systems. That atoms of which they are made mindlessly obey the local laws of physics; even cells and organs do their individual jobs without explicitly understanding the larger whole of which they are a part. And yet the system as a whole functions beautifully, with apparent purpose and function. How do the small parts come together to form the greater whole? I talk with biophysicist Rosemary Braun about what we're learning about collective behavior within organisms from the modern era of huge biological datasets, especially crucial aspects like timekeeping (with bonus implications for dealing with jet lag).
Rosemary Braun received her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an M.P.H. in biostatistics from Johns Hopkins. She is currently an associate professor of molecular biosciences, applied math, and physics at Northwestern University and external faculty at the Santa Fe Institute.
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Sean Carroll channel: / seancarroll
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[@mattgraves3709]

Outstanding topic and guest. Thanks both!

[@brlopwn]

"Those observations lie on a very low dimensional manifold" and "There's a wide basin of attraction." I love it. This kind of conceptual understanding of things (literally the matter of the universe) really makes me think that there are some incredible advances just on the horizon, especially in biology. I know another commenter asked if Professor Braun has had any interaction with Dr. Michael Levin's lab, and I really hope so! But I am also just some random listener on youtube, so maybe there is a lot more going on and I am basically out of the loop, haha. Thank you for the engrossing discussion!

[@mattlyons6325]

My favorite ep so far this was all new to me

[@williamjmccartan8879]

Sean, thank you for being the science communicator you are, I wonder if Rosemary Braun has met Michael Levin, that could be really cool. Thank you both Rosemary and Sean for sharing this conversation, peace

[@AlanSouzGoms]

Muito bom! Gostei muitíssimo desse podcast!

[@cboniefbr]

Love these biology scapes

[@Amethyst_Friend]

I too!

[@cbskwkdnslwhanznamdm2849]

Fantastic!

[@matthewrossmann7000]

I would think that the reliability of phenotypes would suggest fine tuning on a scale we haven't uncovered.

[@trevorcrowley5748]

"How do the small parts come together to form the greater whole?" Did we get the answer? Looking forward to the book on emergence...

[@booJay]

Just wanted to point out that there are actually very poor concordance rates between mRNA and protein. That is, just because there's RNA being transcribed doesn't necessarily mean much, if any protein will be translated from it. There are other factors like post-transcriptional modifications that will affect how long mRNA will last, how much it will be translated, etc.

[@joshua3171]

Has the time internally taken into account the the earth has slowed down, wasn't always 24hr days

[@rajeevgangal542]

Almost thought I was being interviewed. So similar were answers in my 50 Yr old make head who had a physics background, left for bioinformatics then left it for ml analytics. But yes I would have answered very similarly. Won't we all have...

[@smlanka4u]

The mind is a detector that runs all around the body through blood. The Buddha said, the mind is a magician.

[@zack_120]

14:31- The use of this proxy is a huge assumption and is widely used in the wet lab research as well. But how much of a protein is made through the translation of RNA also depends on the abundance And activity of the enzymes rather other only on the abundance of the RNA. Lots of unreliable research papers are produced due to this overly simplified assumption and end up wasting of resources. Similarly, another proxy, mice study, offers little value until confirmed in humans, except as a guide of investigation in basic research. Directly projecting findings in mice to humans is laughable.

[@c.f.3503]

First

[@SG-kj2uy]

cool🎇