What is the essence of life ? Is it a structure, a process, a machine... ?

The aim of the Dynamics of Living SystemsChairis to investigate the unique and universal properties of living systems, from the inside of the cell to the organism. Its primary inspiration is the vast diversity of the living world as seen by naturalists and microscopists in the laboratory. His motivation is based on the conviction that there are unifying principles to account for this diversity, and that they are to be found in a physical explanation of living things. Our research, like the lectures we present, is therefore intrinsically multidisciplinary. From a historical perspective, they show the incredible richness of life as yet unexplored by biologists, and the predictive and unifying power of theoretical models to account for it.

Living organisms are unique. It is organized on multiple spatial scales (from molecules to cells and organisms) and temporal scales (fractions of a second to several days or years), and this organization obeys a functional purpose. Several remarkable properties characterize the organization of living organisms. It is intrinsically dynamic. But in the face of environmental noise and molecular processes, it is nevertheless highly reproducible. It is transmitted from generation to generation. And it evolves over long time scales. This raises the question of the origin of the dynamic organization of living systems.

A first place, the lectures at this Chair explore the origins of these dynamics. What physical processes, mainly mechanical and energetic, are at the heart of the dynamics of cellular behaviors such as cell growth and division, cell motility and shape changes ? How are these processes collectively organized during the formation of tissues, organs and embryos ? How are shape, size and movement controlled/coded at different scales of living organization during the development of animals and plants, in bacterial colonies, or in any single-cell organism ?

Secondly , the lectures focus on the information contained in living matter, to understand how it presides over its organization, propagates at different scales, ensures the development of an organism and its evolution.