Excerpt from "NSF-Simons centers to search for the Rules of Life," posted on NSF News, May 24, 2018.
The National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with the Simons Foundation, has launched four new centers to bring mathematical perspectives to the biological search for the Rules of Life.
The NSF-Simons Research Centers for Mathematics of Complex Biological Systems will explore how information encoded in DNA results in complex organisms with diverse forms, functions and behaviors when it is manipulated by changing environments across multiple time scales.
Such knowledge may lead to a predictive framework for understanding the pathways that lead from the DNA within a cell to the myriad expressions of an organism in its environment, with applications to agriculture and health.
"Many people think of math as proofs or calculations, but it's so much more," said Juan Meza, director of NSF's Division of Mathematical Sciences. "It's really a powerful tool that helps us study nature. By applying mathematics to the complex processes that underlie biology, we may finally be able to understand exactly how something as seemingly simple as a sequence of genes led to the broad diversity of organisms we see today."
Contingent on the availability of funds, each of the four centers will receive a total of $10 million to support a five-year project. NSF will distribute $20 million in federal funds that will be matched by $20 million provided independently by the Simons Foundation.
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