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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Photo by Dan Freeman on Unsplash
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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