AMAbiotics SAS, CEA/Genoscope, 2 rue Gaston Crémieux, 91057 Evry Cedex, France.
Natural Sciences Division, University of Hawaii, Hilo, HI 96720-4091, USA.
Genes (Basel). 2011 Nov 29;2(4):998-1016. doi: 10.3390/genes2040998.
The notion of antifragility, an attribute of systems that makes them thrive under variable conditions, has recently been proposed by Nassim Taleb in a business context. This idea requires the ability of such systems to 'tinker', i.e., to creatively respond to changes in their environment. A fairly obvious example of this is natural selection-driven evolution. In this ubiquitous process, an original entity, challenged by an ever-changing environment, creates variants that evolve into novel entities. Analyzing functions that are essential during stationary-state life yield examples of entities that may be antifragile. One such example is proteins with flexible regions that can undergo functional alteration of their side residues or backbone and thus implement the tinkering that leads to antifragility. This in-built property of the cell chassis must be taken into account when considering construction of cell factories driven by engineering principles.
反脆弱性的概念，即系统在多变条件下茁壮成长的属性，最近由纳西姆·塔勒布（Nassim Taleb）在商业背景下提出。这个概念需要系统具备“修补”能力，即创造性地应对环境变化。一个相当明显的例子是自然选择驱动的进化。在这个普遍存在的过程中，一个原始实体受到不断变化的环境的挑战，创造出变体，进而演变成新的实体。分析在静态生命中必不可少的功能，就可以得到一些可能具有反脆弱性的实体的例子。其中一个例子是具有柔性区域的蛋白质，这些柔性区域可以改变侧链残基或主链的功能，从而实现导致反脆弱性的修补。在考虑基于工程原理构建细胞工厂时，必须考虑到细胞底盘的这种内在特性。
