During class when everyone picked a book they were reading and doing the midterm report on, I had picked Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams by Mitchell Resnick. But, I have been reading through How Nature Works by Per Bak and decided that I like this book more than Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams. I was wondering if someone in class is also reading this book for the midterm project and would mind if I used it for my mid-term project as well...

The subject of protein folding came up in one of my classes and although I had studied protein folding before, this time I began to wonder if protein folding is also an emergent system. Basically, protein folding is how a particular amino acid sequence folds itself into a conformation that is lowest in energy. The process it goes through can be described to be like a funnel, where the sequence tries to fold itself in different conformations while eliminating high energy conformations until it gets to the native state (the conformation lowest in energy). The idea that amino acids are simple units that when arranged in a particular sequence, always fold in a similar manner led me to believe that protein folding could be an emergent system. There is no architect or conductor in protein folding as the native state of the protein depends primarily upon how the particular amino acids in the protein associate with themselves.

My understanding of emergence from Monday’s class is that it refers to how simple rules lead to complex patterns. It’s really interesting how this seemingly simple concept applies to so many different areas of study. Being a chemistry major, I began looking for evidence of emergence in the chemical world. I found a website that describes the similarities between The Game of Life and chemical synthesis. The similarity is that simple rules of interactions between molecules are used repeatedly to build very complex products.