Reflections on the National Science Foundation’s Understanding the Rules of Life Program

In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) established a five-year program on Understanding the Rules of Life (URoL) to identify generalizable rules that govern biological systems at micro and macro levels. At the request of NSF, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a series of workshops to explore the achievements of the URoL program. Presenters and participants discussed integration of multi-disciplinary, systems-level approaches, broader implications for studying highly complex systems, future scientific questions and future societal needs, and the production of generalizable rules that apply to different fields and scales. This publication summarizes the presentation and discussion of the workshop.

Table of Contents

Front Matter The National Science Foundation's Big Ideaon Understanding the Rules of Life 1 URoL: Epigenetics 2 URoL: Microbiome 3 URoL: Building a Synthetic Cell 4 URoL: Multidisciplinary Research, Education and Training, and Broader Impacts Appendix A: Workshop Agendas Appendix B: Biographical Sketches for Workshop Planning Committee and Participants Appendix C: URoL-Funded Projects