Pragmatic turn in biology: From biological molecules to genetic content operators

Biological Dynamics; from molecules to cells

The Academy was founded in the early nineteenth century to promote learning in the Netherlands. In 1851 the 'Royal Institute of Sciences, Letters and Arts', which had been in existence since 1808, became the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences', with two divisions: one for mathematics and the natural sciences and one for literary and historical scholarship. Based in the Trippenhuis i...

From molecules to dynamic biological communities

Microbial ecology is flourishing, and in the process, is making contributions to how the ecology and biology of large organisms is understood. Ongoing advances in sequencing technology and computational methods have enabled the collection and analysis of vast amounts of molecular data from diverse biological communities. While early studies focused on cataloguing microbial biodiversity in envir...

Proteomics: from single molecules to biological pathways

The conventional reductionist approach to cardiovascular research investigates individual candidate factors or linear signalling pathways but ignores more complex interactions in biological systems. The advent of molecular profiling technologies that focus on a global characterization of whole complements allows an exploration of the interconnectivity of pathways during pathophysiologically rel...

Biological adhesives: from biology to biomimetics

From biological analysis to synthetic biology

Billions of years of evolution have produced organisms of stunning diversity. Some of these are relatively simple, like the bacteria; others show impressive complexity. For two decades, I have worked on a theoretical reconstruction and understanding of the major transitions that generated the levels of biological organisation that we see today. Many in biology have an antipathy to mathematics, ...