The Logic of Living Systems
Discover the governing mechanisms that animate life across molecular, cellular, and organismal scales. Learn how biological systems balance energetic budgets, coordinate genetic circuits, and navigate evolutionary trade-offs.
Like Duolingo, but for The Logic of Living Systems. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 11 levels across 2 sections, about 22 minutes end to end, roughly 4 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Energy and Information at the Cellular Level and Organismal Balance and Evolutionary Realities. It assumes you already know the basics.
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Key ideas in The Logic of Living Systems
- Cells couple uphill reactions by transferring a phosphate group directly onto a substrate.
- Phosphorylating the substrate creates an unstable intermediate that reacts spontaneously with ammonia.
- ATP hydrolysis drives reactions through direct chemical intermediate coupling, not thermal energy release.
- ATP synthesis requires an impermeable membrane to trap protons and build a gradient.
- Proton leaks dissipate the electrochemical gradient as harmless heat instead of mechanical work.
- Electron transport chains keep consuming oxygen even when uncoupled from ATP production.
- Protons entering membrane rotor channels generate torque that spins a central asymmetrical shaft.
- Rotation of the central stalk alters the shape of static catalytic head subunits.
- Shape changes mechanically compress bound ADP and phosphate together into ATP.
- Cells spend baseline ATP pumping sodium out to create a ready reserve of potential energy.
- Opening sodium channels allows immediate, passive influx that fires action potentials.
- Secondary active transporters use downhill sodium influx to drag nutrients like glucose into cells.
- Transcription factors compete dynamically for overlapping promoter sequences based on binding affinity
- A repressor with higher affinity will displace or block an activator at the same regulatory region
- Promoters integrate competing inputs as biochemical logic gates to dictate transcriptional output
- Negative feedback buffers stochastic noise to keep cellular protein levels within a tight range
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives The Logic of Living Systems the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
When making glutamine, what happens to glutamate right after it receives a phosphate group?
Get it right to open this lesson and 10 more in the app.
Where The Logic of Living Systems takes you
- 1
Energy and Information at the Cellular Level
- Powering Cellular Work with Ion Gradients
- Decoding Gene Regulation and Cellular Circuits
- 2
Organismal Balance and Evolutionary Realities
- Homeostatic Regulation and Physiological Costs
- Navigating Evolutionary Trade-offs and Constraints
2 sections · 4 units · 11 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
The Logic of Living Systems is taught in the Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start The Logic of Living Systems today.
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