Biology Stack Exchange
Biology Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [complexity]

11 questions
9
votes
2 answers

What measures are commonly used for the complexity of an organism?

I'm aware of measures like number of distinct cell types being used as a measurement of complexity in biology, for example in the G-value paradox. But this doesn't really help for unicellular organisms. Is it possible to define a unit of complexity…
niallhaslam
  • 710
  • 6
  • 11
4
votes
2 answers

Is there a way to measure the amount of bytes that are possible to encode in a DNA molecule?

When I saw a DNA molecule for the first time, it kinda reminded me of a hard drive. It consists of slots and there are some possible combinations for each slot; in the hard drive these possible combinations would be 0's and 1's. In DNA, these slots…
Red Banana
  • 379
  • 1
  • 10
3
votes
0 answers

How can we define complexity in the context of biology?

Can somebody provide a definition of complexity in the context of biology? Is it something of a personal opinion on the side of the user to decide precisely what s/he means by using the word complexity or is there something all biologists can agree…
Yordan Yordanov
  • 294
  • 2
  • 13
2
votes
1 answer

Basener's ceiling and evolution

There is a theorem in the Intelligent Design literature called Basener's ceiling. It states that all evolutionary algorithms that attempt to optimize some fitness function will eventually reach a plateau where complexity no longer increases. This…
yters
  • 275
  • 1
  • 6
2
votes
0 answers

Source for an upper bound in the number of genes based on mutation rates

So I've found myself referring in an answer once again to the idea that complexity (insofar as it's a quantity for which "number of genes" is a proxy) has an upper bound, limited by Muller's ratchet-related processes. The idea being that if harmful…
Oosaka
  • 3,210
  • 10
  • 19
2
votes
1 answer

Are there complexity requirements on potential hosts to be susceptible to parasites?

Are there lower bounds to complexity for hosts and how are these described or modeled? In other words, one would expect an organism to have a certain amount of "surplus tissue" in order for parasites to be able to feed on it, at least without…
Antoshka
  • 121
  • 2
1
vote
1 answer

What is the most genetically complex organism?

I understand that new genomes are being sequenced ever day and these answers replace themselves often; although as of today, what has been proven to be the most genetically complex organism (Other than a human of course)? I keep getting a multitude…
Amoebob
  • 23
  • 5
1
vote
1 answer

What is the relationship between complexity and organization in biology?

Is there any relationship between what we can call complexity and what we can call organization in biology? And if there is, what is it? Can we define these terms independently of each other or would the definition of one of them always inescapably…
Yordan Yordanov
  • 294
  • 2
  • 13
0
votes
0 answers

How to build SEG in your personal environment?

I'm trying to implement SEG (Wootton & Federhen,1993) in my MATLAB and Python environment. From this oriinal article I cannot figure out what I need to build my script. Are there any related article that explains the various steps to build this…
Spartan 117
  • 1
  • 2
0
votes
1 answer

Does natural selection still increase biological complexity?

I recently read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, which I found very interesting. In one of the last chapters, he gives multiple possible explanations to the question "Why did natural selection give rise to complicated lifeforms?". Since complex…
Lourens
  • 21
  • 4
-1
votes
1 answer

What structures does our brain use for a quick indexing of all the data we store in our heads?

What structures does our brain use for a quick indexing of all the data we store in our heads? From how my brains work (i.e. that I can very quickly recollect something from the past) I would say that my brain does not do a linear scan of all the…
qqqqqqq
  • 101
  • 2