The living cell as a sloppy dynamical system

The emergence of stable cell states (morphology, metabolism and function) reflects the organization of regulatory modes determining the temporal spectrum of intracellular proteins. In the last decade, our study of cell populations exposed some intriguing characteristics of their behavior, showing that cell-state organization reflects exploratory dynamics in a degenerate, high-dimensional phase-space. I’ll discuss these dynamics, arguing that the living cell belongs to a broad class of systems exhibiting sloppy dynamics, characterized by their insensitivity to the underlying parameters yet efficient convergence to a viable state. Understanding of the physics of such dynamical systems remains elusive.