Dynamic systems theory is very powerful organizing principle / concept that makes biology make a lot more sense. It also helps to constantly remind yourself that academic science divisions - in particular physics, chemistry, and biology - are fairly arbitrary and nature doesn't care much about them, and this becomes very clear from a system-based view.
Without a grasp of basic physical concepts like conservation of mass and energy and the direction of entropy, life is an impenetrable mystery. For example, imagine a river flowing downstream with eddies on the sides - those eddies have an upstream flow component, driven by the overall downstream energy flow. Living cells do the same thing: they capture physical and chemical energy from their surroundings and use their networks of nucleic acids and proteins, and their encapsulation structures, to reverse the normal downstream flow of entropy.
Everything else follows pretty logically from there. How do cells communicate with their surroundings? They take up materials, excrete wastes, collect sensory data, engage in chemical messaging, and so on. How do cells maintain their nucleic acid and protein networks? By constantly repairing and rebuilding and replicating them using inputs of energy and materials. What is reproduction? A systems-level cellular reboot that also introduces novelty in the form of mutations and rearrangements (which may be useful, or not).
For a good intro to systems-based thinking in biology:
(2020) Systems Biology: A Very Short Introduction, Eberhard O. Voit
If you want a deep dive into the modern view of the dynamic, 3D genome, this is a great source (which also explains why just knowing the primary sequence of a genome doesn't necessarily lead to an understanding of disease states, failure modes, etc.):
(2015) The Deeper Genome: Why There Is More to the Human Genome Than Meets the Eye, John Parrington
Without a grasp of basic physical concepts like conservation of mass and energy and the direction of entropy, life is an impenetrable mystery. For example, imagine a river flowing downstream with eddies on the sides - those eddies have an upstream flow component, driven by the overall downstream energy flow. Living cells do the same thing: they capture physical and chemical energy from their surroundings and use their networks of nucleic acids and proteins, and their encapsulation structures, to reverse the normal downstream flow of entropy.
Everything else follows pretty logically from there. How do cells communicate with their surroundings? They take up materials, excrete wastes, collect sensory data, engage in chemical messaging, and so on. How do cells maintain their nucleic acid and protein networks? By constantly repairing and rebuilding and replicating them using inputs of energy and materials. What is reproduction? A systems-level cellular reboot that also introduces novelty in the form of mutations and rearrangements (which may be useful, or not).
For a good intro to systems-based thinking in biology:
(2020) Systems Biology: A Very Short Introduction, Eberhard O. Voit
https://www.veryshortintroductions.com/view/10.1093/actrade/...
If you want a deep dive into the modern view of the dynamic, 3D genome, this is a great source (which also explains why just knowing the primary sequence of a genome doesn't necessarily lead to an understanding of disease states, failure modes, etc.):
(2015) The Deeper Genome: Why There Is More to the Human Genome Than Meets the Eye, John Parrington
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25660581-the-deeper-geno...