Related papers: Evolving complexity: how tinkering shapes cells, s…
Understanding the origins of complexity is a fundamental challenge with implications for biological and technological systems. Network theory emerges as a powerful tool to model complex systems. Networks are an intuitive framework to…
"Every object that biology studies is a system of systems." (Fran\c{c}ois Jacob, 1974). Most networks feature intricate architectures originating from tinkering, a repetitive use of existing components where structures are not invented but…
The recent discovery of universal principles underlying many complex networks occurring across a wide range of length scales in the biological world has spurred physicists in trying to understand such features using techniques from…
Interconnected ensembles of biological entities are perhaps some of the most complex systems that modern science has encountered so far. In particular, scientists have concentrated on understanding how the complexity of the interacting…
Biological networks have evolved to be highly functional within uncertain environments while remaining extremely adaptable. One of the main contributors to the robustness and evolvability of biological networks is believed to be their…
Modularity structures are common in various social and biological networks. However, its dynamical origin remains an open question. In this work, we set up a dynamical model describing the evolution of a social network. Based on the…
Generative mechanisms which lead to empirically observed structure of networked systems from diverse fields like biology, technology and social sciences form a very important part of study of complex networks. The structure of many…
Many complex systems can be described in terms of networks of interacting units. Recent studies have shown that a wide class of both natural and artificial nets display a surprisingly widespread feature: the presence of highly heterogeneous…
"Evolution behaves like a tinkerer" (Francois Jacob, Science, 1977). Software systems provide a unique opportunity to understand biological processes using concepts from network theory. The Debian GNU/Linux operating system allows us to…
Modern biological tools have made it possible to unequivocally demonstrate the deep relationship among species in terms of genes and basic molecular mechanisms. In addition, results from genetic, physical and physiological approaches…
Real-world networks such as the Internet and WWW have many common traits. Until now, hundreds of models were proposed to characterize these traits for understanding the networks. Because different models used very different mechanisms, it…
Although it is unambiguously agreed that structure plays a fundamental role in shaping the dynamics of complex systems, this intricate relationship still remains unclear. We investigate a general computational transformation by which we can…
We review the recent fast progress in statistical physics of evolving networks. Interest has focused mainly on the structural properties of random complex networks in communications, biology, social sciences and economics. A number of giant…
Many real-world complex networks arise as a result of a competition between growth and rewiring processes. Usually the initial part of the evolution is dominated by growth while the later one rather by rewiring. The initial growth allows…
A central biological question is how natural organisms are so evolvable (capable of quickly adapting to new environments). A key driver of evolvability is the widespread modularity of biological networks--their organization as functional,…
We study the evolution of the network properties of a populated network embedded in a genotype space characterised by either a low or a high number of potential links, with particular emphasis on the connectivity and clustering. Evolution…
The possibility that evolutionary forces -- together with a few fundamental factors such as thermodynamic constraints, specific computational features enabling information processing, and ecological processes -- might constrain the logic of…
Turing's theory of pattern formation is a universal model for self-organization, applicable to many systems in physics, chemistry and biology. Essential properties of a Turing system, such as the conditions for the existence of patterns and…
Biological networks such as gene regulatory networks possess desirable properties. They are more robust and controllable than random networks. This motivates the search for structural and dynamical features that evolution has incorporated…
This thesis is a compendium of research which brings together ideas from the fields of Complex Networks and Computational Neuroscience to address two questions regarding neural systems: 1) How the activity of neurons, via synaptic changes,…