by The Physics arXiv Blog
Engineers have long known that the best way to build stuff is in modules. If one module goes wrong, it’s then straightforward to replace it. For example, the graphics card on a computer, the alternator in a car or a camera in the Hubble Space Telescope. By contrast, when a single complex system goes wrong, it’s hard to fix, since all the parts are interdependent. Think of the economy or financial markets. It might come as no surprise to discover that nature has also learnt this trick. Biological system tend to be modular, particularly those that can be thought of as networks, such as brains, gene regulatory networks and metabolic pathways. (Networks are modular if they contain highly connected clusters of nodes that are only loosely connected to other clusters.)
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428504/computer-scientists-reproduce-the-evolution-of/
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