Implemented Engineering principles govern how biology works. By evolution, or design?

Implemented Engineering principles govern how biology works. By evolution, or design?

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t3115-implemented-engineering-principles-govern-how-biology-works-by-evolution-or-design

1. Cells demonstrate to operate based on engineering principles.
2. Engineering is something always performed by intelligence.
3. Therefore, Cells are most probably designed

1. Cells are marvellous factories, that display technologically super advanced solutions. They use information, and codes to instruct how to make and operate things,  highly specialized machines to make energy turbines,  molecular machines to make their own materials, the basic building blocks of life, and mechanisms to self-replicate.  They operate based on minute tolerances involved in their production and assembly. Exquisite precision is required in the synchronization of their operation. 
2. Engineering is from the latin word ingenium, meaning "cleverness" and ingeniare, meaning "to contrive, devise, invent". Science has discovered, that cells operate based on engineering principles such as integral control and robustness  implemented in diverse intracellular systems. As such, cells display superior inventions and innovations over us, and new scientific fields, like Biomimetics, take advantage over this. 
3. Engineering requires engineers, that use their intelligence to invent and employ superior technological solutions for complex functions and solutions. Therefore, the best explanation for living cells is an intelligent designer. 

THE ROLE OF THEORY IN ADVANCING 21ST-CENTURY BIOLOGY
Across all scales of biology, from subcellular circuits to ecosystems, many biological systems demonstrate “robustness”: in other words, they continue to function despite defective parts or changes in the environment. Like the workings of the living cell, this robustness is a biological phenomenon­­  that human engineers would be proud to duplicate. Understanding the principles by which modules combine to create systems with particular properties (another useful, cross-cutting concept) will undoubtedly result in theoretical insights that would apply across biological scales from the molecular to the ecosystem—and perhaps provide valuable lessons for human efforts in design and engineering.

What is the information that defines and sustains life? 
The power of the computer rests in its ability to represent an immense range of phenomena in digital form that can then be manipulated. Many of the characteristics of life can similarly be represented as flows of information, as it is striking that all living organisms and communities of organisms are able to sense, process, remember, and respond to many different kinds of external and internal stimuli that can be conceptualized as information. 

Ideas of how some component interactions might give rise to emergent behaviors in biological systems can be deduced by analogy with engineered systems such as electrical circuits. For example, positive feedback loops, where an enzyme converted from an inactive to an active state in turn activates more copies of the same enzyme, are able to amplify small signals and give rise to large-scale switch-like responses to important but small changes in a cell’s environment.

The field of biomimetics attempts to use biological engineering principles to generate devices that have desirable biological properties such as robust­ness and reconfiguration.

What Have the Principles of Engineering Taught Us about Biological Systems? 2
Engineering principles such as integral control and robustness were found to be implemented in diverse biological systems. Nature has so far proved to be a superior inventor and innovator over us. While it is fruitful to
comprehend biological complexity in terms of engineering principles, perhaps a fascinating question in the near future would be ‘‘what can biological systems teach us about engineering (and physics and mathematics)?’’

While biological systems appear to be ad hoc in many ways, the more we begin to understand them, the more we begin to see engineering principles of abstraction, modularity, redundancy, self-diagnosis, and hierarchy. By viewing seemingly random biological design ‘‘decisions’’ through an engineering lens, we have found powerful patterns, intricate mechanical mechanisms, and evolved modularity.

Biology is transforming engineering, as evidenced by the new discipline of Biologically Inspired Engineering, which seeks to leverage biological principles to develop new engineering innovations

Natural designs are simple, functional, and remarkably elegant. Biology is a great source for innovative design inspiration. By examining the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution of living entities, biology contributes a whole different set of tools and ideas that a design engineer wouldn't otherwise have. Biology has greatly influenced engineering. The intriguing and awesome achievements of the natural world have inspired engineering breakthroughs that many take for granted, such as airplanes, pacemakers and velcro. One cannot simply dismiss engineering breakthroughs utilizing biological organisms or phenomena as chance occurrences.
1

Governing mechanobiological principles that have been uncovered permits the development of new engineering innovations. 3

The level of control that organisms exercise over the materials properties of structural inorganic biomaterials is unparalleled in modern engineering. Even more tantalizing is the organisms’ ability to form multifunctional materials that are optimized to perform structural, optical, mechanical and other functions – almost unrelated from the engineering point of view.  These properties originate from a sophisticated structural design achieved by the interplay between inorganic minerals and organic biological macromolecules.  4

Often nature’s solutions to engineering problems are so different from our conventional ways of thinking that the most fruitful way to investigate them is not immediately obvious.

Natural systems frequently exploit intricate multiscale and multiphasic structures to achieve functionalities beyond those of man-made systems. Natural biological systems are constrained by a limited number of chemical building blocks, yet through practical material organization and mechanics1, fulfil the functional needs of diverse organisms by methods that often exceed what is currently achievable using man-made approaches.  Many natural systems and materials have solutions that result in a number of improved properties simultaneously (for example, high modulus with high fracture toughness), and often produce systems that fulfil multiple functions concurrently. There is great potential in using these myosin engineering and manufacturing techniques in formalizing design approaches13,79 to construct biomimetic devices, such as smart contractile materials, molecular sensors and nano-actuators with optimized responses.  Natural systems with mechanofunctionality can inform engineering endeavours far beyond simple material selection.5

Gregory T. Reeves: Survey of Engineering Models for Systems Biology 18 Jan 2016
Systems biology shares many characteristics with engineering. However, before the benefits of engineering-based modeling formalisms and analysis tools can be applied to systems biology, the engineering discipline(s) most related to systems biology must be identified. In this paper, we identify the cell as an embedded computing system and, as such, demonstrate that systems biology shares many aspects in common with computer systems engineering, electrical engineering, and chemical engineering. 6




1. https://www.intechopen.com/books/biomimetics-learning-from-nature/function-based-biology-inspired-concept-generation
2. https://www.cell.com/cell-systems/pdf/S2405-4712(16)00009-0.pdf
3. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2017.0323
4. https://aizenberglab.seas.harvard.edu/biological-engineering-principles
5. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8418
6. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/cbj/2016/4106329/

THE ROLE OF THEORY IN ADVANCING 21ST-CENTURY BIOLOGY

Across all scales of biology, from subcellular circuits to ecosystems, many biological systems demonstrate “robustness”: in other words, they continue to function despite defective parts or changes in the environment. Like the workings of the living cell, this robustness is a biological phenomenon­­  that human engineers would be proud to duplicate. Understanding the principles by which modules combine to create systems with particular properties (another useful, cross-cutting concept) will undoubtedly result in theoretical insights that would apply across biological scales from the molecular to the ecosystem—and perhaps provide valuable lessons for human efforts in design and engineering.

What is the information that defines and sustains life? 
The power of the computer rests in its ability to represent an immense range of phenomena in digital form that can then be manipulated. Many of the characteristics of life can similarly be represented as flows of information, as it is striking that all living organisms and communities of organisms are able to sense, process, remember, and respond to many different kinds of external and internal stimuli that can be conceptualized as information. 


Ideas of how some component interactions might give rise to emergent behaviors in biological systems can be deduced by analogy with engineered systems such as electrical circuits. For example, positive feedback loops, where an enzyme converted from an inactive to an active state in turn activates more copies of the same enzyme, are able to amplify small signals and give rise to large-scale switch-like responses to important but small changes in a cell’s environment.


The field of biomimetics attempts to use biological engineering principles to generate devices that have desirable biological properties such as robust­ness and reconfiguration.