The systemic approach adopted in this work focuses on generic biological phenomena. The goal is to explain the strategies employed by biological systems by invoking fundamental concepts in physics, chemistry, and information theory. Structure and function is the first of five chapters which make up the book.closely associated with the principles of evolution. Evolutionary development has produced structures which enable organisms to develop and maintain its architecture, perform actions, and store the resources needed to survive. For this reason we introduce a distinction between support structures (which are akin to construction materials), function-related structures (fulfilling the role of tools and machines), and storage structures (needed to store important substances, achieving a compromise between tight packing and ease of access).for self-organization. Ongoing evolution has led to the emergence of biological constructs capable of exploiting basic physico-chemical interactions in support of directed organization processes, limiting in this way the quantity of the encoded information needed to perform their function. Examples of self-organization include the spontaneous folding in water of polypeptide chains and creation of cellular membranes.
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