2024/08/20 by Diana T. Pham, Pham, Diana T., Z. E. Musielak +1
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Biological sciences #Fractal and DNA sequence analysis #Gene Regulatory Network Analysis #Origins and Evolution of Life #Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2408.10834
openalex publication_date 2024/08/20 · openalex created_date 2024/10/01 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Lagrangian formalism has attracted the attention of mathematicians and physicists for more than 250 years and has played significant roles in establishing modern theoretical physics. The history of the Lagrangian formalism in biology is much shorter, spanning only the last 50 years. In this paper, a broad review of the Lagrangian formalism in biology is presented in the context of both its historical and modern developments. Detailed descriptions of different methods to derive Lagrangians for five selected population dynamics models are given and the resulting Lagrangians are presented and discussed. The procedure to use the obtained Lagrangians to gain new biological insights into the evolution of the populations without solving the equations of motion is described and applied to the models. Finally, perspectives of the Lagrangian formalism in biology are discussed.