Emergence

Synthetic morphogenesis is limited by knowledge gaps about the competencies of cells and cell groups. This Review discusses a synthetic bioengineering framework based on empirically determined properties of cells, including goal-seeking and agential behaviours, which will allow the creation of complex devices that cannot be built using bottom-up approaches.

Ant and honeybee workers specialize on certain tasks and also on zones within the nest; but how do they avoid straying into the wrong zone? The authors conduct automated tracking experiments following thousands of individuals, revealing that workers use context-dependent rules to navigate inside the nest.

The authors discuss how adopting a complex systems perspective is a crucial step in advancing our understanding of the aging process and requires fundamental alteration of the questions being asked and the methods used to answer them.

Transcription factor (TF) condensates appear to be pervasive, yet their roles remain debated. Here, the authors use a synthetic biology approach to show that TF clusters causally amplify transcription and can confer bimodality and “memory”.

In this Perspective, Tononi and colleagues argue that while knowledge of elementary mechanisms is enough to predict everything about the dynamics of a system, only the analysis of causal structures can provide a coherent account of ‘what caused what’.