What is it about?

The stability landscape is often used as a tool for explaining and communicating advanced concepts about dynamic systems to professional communities as diverse as environmental scientists, ecologists, economists, mathematicians and policy makers. It is a particularly popular tool in cell biology, where it is often referred to as Waddington’s epigenetic landscape. Unfortunately, for most biological models with more than one interacting element, such a landscape doesn’t exist unless the system under study satisfies very restrictive conditions. Here we provide an analogy with art to explain why this is the case, plus a software package to deal with the problem.

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Why is it important?

It provides clarity about a complicated subject. Saves researchers some time and potential frustrations.

Perspectives

The most interesting parts of this article regarding science communication are: 1. The use of an analogy with art to explain a complex problem 2. The development of an open-source software solution to access a broad community

Dr. Pablo Rodriguez
Netherlands eScience Center

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Climbing Escher’s stairs: A way to approximate stability landscapes in multidimensional systems, PLoS Computational Biology, April 2020, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007788.
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