The Actin Cytoskeleton as an Active Adaptive Material.

Actin is the main protein used by biological cells to adapt their structure and mechanics to their needs. Cellular adaptation is made possible by molecular processes that strongly depend on mechanics. The actin cytoskeleton is also an active material that continuously consumes energy.

Adaptation of Living Systems.

Adaptation refers to the biological phenomenon where living systems change their internal states in response to changes in their environments in order to maintain certain key functions critical for their survival and fitness. Adaptation is one of the most ubiquitous and arguably one of the most fundamental properties of living systems. It occurs throughout all biological scales, from adaptation of populations of species over evolutionary time to adaptation of a single cell to different environmental stresses during its life span.

Napoleon Is in Equilibrium.

It has been said that the cell is the test tube of the twenty-first century. If so, the theoretical tools needed to quantitatively and predictively describe what goes on in such test tubes lag sorely behind the stunning experimental advances in biology seen in the decades since the molecular biology revolution began. Perhaps surprisingly, one of the theoretical tools that has been used with great success on problems ranging from how cells communicate with their environment and each other to the nature of the organization of proteins and lipids within the cell membrane is statistical mechanics.