Regulation is necessary across all scales of life, from proteins in the simplest bacteria to the bureaucracies that govern societies.
Inside cells, transcription factors act to coordinate gene expression, leading to distinct expression states and cell types. In multicellular organisms, brains and nervous systems coordinate organs and appendages to achieve desired physiological outcomes. In society, laws passed from centralized institutions—from the laws of sport to legal codes—ensure that people interact in fair, useful, and respectful ways, resulting in institutional success. Regulation is a cost—paid in cellular resources, metabolic energy, administrative labor, or taxpayer dollars—but enables systems to maintain coordinated function despite internal and external perturbations.
To regulate is to facilitate stability and robustness, allowing a complex system to persist. But how far can this cross-system analogy go? What are the principles underlying a Science of Regulation that spans the tree of life? The goal of the Rules, Regulations, and Randomness (R3) Lab is to develop a Science of Regulation across domains in the physical, biological, and social sciences. My research approaches this problem through three interconnected questions:
- How do regulatory systems grow?
- How does the diversity of functions they regulate arise?
- How do regulatory systems remain robust while operating in noisy and changing environments?