Systematic Codes about Life

Life is not simple and studying life is more complex than we thought. The invention of the microscope, systematic classification of living organism, theory of evolution, the gene and DNA structure; these are the 5 revolution that changed the perceptions of the scientist about life and here it comes Biology became advanced.

Mathematics has been with us for thousands of years since ancient time. Numbers are just basic in mathematics yet it is much broader- anything about shapes, logic, processes, structure or pattern and even abstract. What we’d learn at school is just arithmetic a tiny and limited knowledge about mathematics. Then there is the mathematics- especially statistics- as biological toolbox not just to analyse data but a method to understand living creatures and this makes as the 6^th revolution that provides a broader, more advance, furious biology, and the best tool to address not just the components of life but the processes used of those components.

The invention of Microscope and Telescope is the first revolution that took place. Due to our limited human scale microscope was created and manufactured opening the door of other world to be entered and studied due to curiosity; these revealed that the world is taken for granted by humans. In human level, milk and grasses are simple but seen through a microscope these substances are complex. It can deduced that the closer we look it became more complex. In 1590, Zaccharias Janseen discovered the first microscope by putting several lenses inside a tube. This discovery is followed by a tradesman and a scientist Anton Van Leeuwenhoek who developed the microscope by using Geometry that lead him to discover that blood is a tiny disc shaped object, and protists like amoeba; the slipper shape organism with wave-like motion- Paramecium and a colony of single celled algae- Volvox.

Opposite function of the microscope is the telescope, which makes possible for us to observe distant and enormously large celestial objects like planets. The lens technology really brought up our knowledge in Biology especially the organs at the molecular level. Furthermore, the shape which the function of an organ depends (i.e, limbs cannot function as limbs if it is on a wrong shape).

The second revolution took place by making a list and then organizing the diversity of life on earth. We know that earth is lived by millions of species where each of them needs its own habitat and food. The enormous diversity of life on earth led Carl Linnaeus to a systematic approach to the classification of living organism. Through him, taxonomists nowadays organized the living kingdom into 8 major hierarchies- Domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. From an enormous organism to the simplest, one has internal complexity that provides a deeper comparison to every organism and there is a search for general pattern. Due to these general patterns, taxonomists can now identify 300,000 species of plants, 30,000 fungi and other non-animals, and 1.25 million animals.

Nature follows a pattern. Plants’ flowers and leaves have a striking pattern of shape and numbers and by counting plant’s organ, a mathematical application is created and became an answer to Biology.  The first two revolutions were to record life diversity and celebrate its richness. So, mathematics gives the strange numerology of the plant kingdom. Plants exhibits a numerical pattern such as the number of petals, arrangement of leaves along a stem (phylotaxy), geometry of seed heads, lumps on a cauliflower, and the way pineapples and pine cones fit. This pattern is called Fibonacci numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13...). Fibonacci numbers are nature’s favourite because most of the arrangement of the leaves, petals, branches, bracts, florets and scales or collectively known primordia which formed near the plant’s apex plant kingdom follows this pattern. For example, the Genetic spiral- “The spiral resulting from connecting chronologically successive primordial” (Adam 2011) - that appears as intersecting sets. One set is at clockwise direction and the other is counter-clockwise (i.e. sunflower 55 clockwise spiral and 34 counter-clockwise).

Before, Biologists believed that inheritance is passed through blood by blending. Gregor Mendel’s idea about inheritance was first rejected by Biologists due to their belief in Blending Hypothesis. It was a widespread belief until it was diminished when Gregor Mendel’s Cousin Francis Galton did a long series of experiment of paragenesis (inheritance is passed through blood by blending) by transfusing rabbit’s blood to other organism but didn’t found any trait of a rabbit.

Gregor Mendel’s qualitative experiment about pea plants led to the discovery of the “heritable factor” (the 4^th revolution) or the gene. This qualitative observation of Mendel was rejected. One of the first characters that Gregor Mendel studied was the colour of the flower of the pea plant (white and purple). He observed that when he crossed breed purple + purple, all offspring are purple (1^st generation), 1/3 are purple and other quarter are white (2^nd generation; 1^st generation was cross pollinated), then (3^rd generation) half of the offspring of the quarters are purple and white. And when white is cross pollinated with white the 2 observation can be observed except the last one. And when white + purple the offspring is always purple, he observed that there was no blending hypothesis occurred.

                                                          Figure 1: Punnett Square

Mendel did this experiment and found a pattern of 3:1 of purple is to white. The law of probability govern the Mendelian inheritance. In each combination of traits in the punnet square is ¼. Since there was only white region, that region is ¼ and the other dark region is ¾. It can be deduced that between 2 traits, we choose one factor from each parent at random with equal probability. Furthermore, Meldel also did an experiment for dihybrid combination and found a 9:3:3:1 pattern and abiding the law of probability. Gregor Mendel died and few generations had passed, and his theory was supported by biologist.

Greeks are known as geometers and the famous of all the ancient geometers is Euclid of Alexandria. In his book “The Elements”, he featured the classification and construction of the 5 regular solids.

        Figure 2: The regular solids.  Left to right: Tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron.

                                                 Figure 3: Enterobacteriophage T4

The icosahedron though it does not appear naturally in nature yet it plays an important role in pure mathematics, engineering, chemistry and biology- especially the shape of viruses. In 1956, it was noticed that most of the viruses have icosahedral shape.

Mathematics became a force in the advancement of physical sciences. Until, it played a role in biology by using mathematical models. It reminds me about our symposium with a mathematician named May Anne Mata. She told us that today’s “in” in discovering/studying new things is not through an independent research instead using another field to study other field, such as applying mathematics in biology. The discovery of marks on the animal body, networking at the molecular level, lens development, shapes and patterns on DNA is what Mathematics did in the development in studying life and it was like “hidden” before but now it changed, mathematics became a tool in science and medicine. And according to Stewart, by the time we get, biology will have changed just as mathematics and physics. That can’t be! Because I believe that, biology is a way to get rid of Mathematics among other science field but I am totally wrong. Instead the achievements of Physical Sciences and Biology were dependent on Mathematics and it will depend to Mathematics.

References:

Stewart I., (2011). Mathematics of Life. 1st ed. United States: Basic Books.

Stewart I., (2011). 'In a Monastery Garden'. In: (ed), Mathematics of Life. 1st ed. United States: Basic Books. pp. 77-90

Stewart I., (2011). 'Virus From the Fourth Dimension'. In: (ed), Mathematics of Life. 1st ed. United States: Basic Books. pp.138-157.