This work is intended to demonstrate that most of the paradoxes, controversies, and contradictions accumulated in molecular and cell biology over many years of research are readily resolved when the cell and living systems in general are re-interpreted within an alternative paradigm of biological organization, which is based on the concepts and empirical laws of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. In addition to resolving paradoxes and controversies, the proposed re-conceptualization of the cell and biological organization reveals hitherto unappreciated connections among many seemingly disparate phenomena and observations and leads to new and powerful insights into the universal principles governing the emergence and organizational dynamics of living systems on each and every scale of biological organizational hierarchy, from proteins and cells to economies and ecologies.

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Scale-free flow of life: on the biology, economics, and physics of the cell (688 kB)

The article has been published in Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling (open access).

PubMed reference:

Kurakin, A. (2009) Scale-free flow of life: on the biology, economics, and physics of the cell. Theor Biol Med Model. 2009 May 5;6:6.