Mechanisms underlying criticality in living organisms

Elucidate the mechanisms that generate and maintain near-critical dynamics in living organisms, with particular emphasis on identifying how biological processes and network properties in gene regulatory systems produce operation near the order–chaos boundary.

Background

The paper establishes a fractal lower bound on Boolean-function sensitivity realized by nested canalizing functions and shows that many empirical gene-regulatory functions cluster near this bound and near the critical sensitivity value. While these observations support the "edge of chaos" picture, the authors stress that the concrete mechanisms by which biological systems achieve and maintain criticality remain to be clarified.