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Biological regulation is what allows an organism to handle the effects of a perturbation, modulating its own constitutive dynamics in response to particular changes in internal and external conditions. With the central focus of analysis on the case of minimal living systems, we argue that regulation consists in a specific form of second -order control , exerted over the core (constitutive) regime of production and maintenance of the components that actually put together the organism. The main argument is that regulation requires a distinctive architecture of functional relationships, and specifically the action of a dedicated subsystem whose activity is dynamically decoupled from that of the constitutive regime.

The activation of dipeptides was studied in the perspective of the abiotic formation of oligopeptides of significant length as a requirement for secondary structure formation. The formation of piperazin-2,5-diones (DKP), previously considered as a dead end when activating free dipeptides, was shown in this work to be efficiently suppressed when using strong activating agents (e.g., carbodiimides). This behaviour was explained by the fast formation of a 5(4H)-oxazolone intermediate at a rate that exceeds the time scale of the rotation of the peptide bond from the predominant trans-conformation into the cis-isomer required for DKP formation.

The main goal of this work is to study element ratios that are important for the formation of planets of dierent masses. Our results demonstrate the importance of Galactic chemical evolution and indicate that it may play an important role in the planetary internal structure and composition. The results also show that abundance ratios may be a very relevant issue for our understanding of planet formation and evolution.

The Europlanet 2020 Research Infrastructure (RI) is a project to integrate and support planetary science activities across Europe. The project is funded under the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme; it was launched on 1st September 2015 and will run until 31 August 2019. The project has 34 beneficiary institutions from 19 European countries. Europlanet 2020 RI will address key scientific and technological challenges facing modern planetary science by providing open access to state-of-the-art research data, models and facilities across the European Research Area.