Major transitions in Life and Evolution: Crossing Boundaries in Living Systems

This symposium, “Major transitions in Life and Evolution: Crossing Boundaries in Living Systems,” will bring together researchers who study living systems at two fundamental boundaries: the boundary between life and nonlife, and the boundary between unicellular and multicellular organization. These two transitions are usually discussed in different communities, but they raise a common scientific question: how does a collection of molecules or cells acquire, maintain, lose, or transform the organizational properties that we call “living”? The workshop will create a focused venue in which experimental microbiology, synthetic and artificial cell research, evolutionary biology, biophysics, mathematical biology, dynamical-systems theory, and machine learning can be discussed within a shared conceptual framework.

The scientific scope is centered on transitions in the state of living systems rather than on a single organism, technique, or scale. Topics will include cellular death and revival, dormancy and slowed life, artificial cells and minimal self-maintaining systems, microbial collectives and biofilms, cell-to-cell heterogeneity, primitive differentiation, the emergence of division of labor, and the theoretical description of transitions between qualitatively distinct biological regimes. A central aim is to compare two kinds of “crossing”: crossing from life toward nonlife or from nonlife toward life and crossing from solitary unicellular life toward multicellular organization. By placing these themes side by side, the workshop will ask whether concepts such as robustness, memory, controllability, phase transition, division of labor, and self-maintenance can provide general principles that apply across major biological transitions.

*OIST members are welcome to attend all scientific sessions. Meals are closed sessions for registered participants only.

Workshop website: https://www.oist.jp/conference/major-transitions-life-and-evolution-crossing-boundaries-living-systems

OIST is deeply committed to the advancement of women in science, in Japan and worldwide. Women are strongly encouraged to apply.