LOW-DIMENSIONAL CHAOS IN BIOLOGICAL-SYSTEMS

During the past five years general rules have been developed for the a pplication of chaos theory to biology and medicine, which enable inves tigators to avoid the pitfalls that invalidated and trivialized many e arlier results. The importance of biological chaos is that the variabl es governing the spatial and temporal geometries of the system may be few in number, fractional in dimension, and thus enable low-energy con trol with complex deterministic consequences. The complexity of contro l inherent in chaotic systems may be important in the dynamics of gene expression and translation. Extending these ideas may lead to complet ely novel ways to modulate protein production by introducing simple pu lses at critical times or places.