Related papers: Physarum polycephalum: Smart network adaptation
Purpose: Protoplasmic tubes of Physarum polycephalum, also know as Physarum Wires (PW), have been previously suggested as novel bio- electronic components. Until recently, practical examples of electronic circuits using PWs have been…
Living systems are often described utilizing informational analogies. An important open question is whether information is merely a useful conceptual metaphor, or intrinsic to the operation of biological systems. To address this question,…
Multistability-induced hysteresis has been widely studied in mechanical systems, but such behavior has proven more difficult to reproduce experimentally in flow networks. Natural flow networks like animal and plant vasculature can exhibit…
The diffusion of active microscopic organisms in complex environments plays an important role in a wide range of biological phenomena from cell colony growth to single organism transport. Here, we investigate theoretically and…
The brain can be considered as a system that dynamically optimizes the structure of anatomical connections based on the efficiency requirements of functional connectivity. To illustrate the power of this principle in organizing the…
In this thesis, we have studied the large scale structure and system level dynamics of certain biological networks using tools from graph theory, computational biology and dynamical systems. We study the structure and dynamics of large…
Life depends as much on the flow of information as on the flow of energy. Here we review the many efforts to make this intuition precise. Starting with the building blocks of information theory, we explore examples where it has been…
An important feature of many complex systems, both natural and artificial, is the structure and organization of their interaction networks with interesting properties. Here we present a theory of self-organization by evolutionary adaptation…
The capacity of cells and organisms to respond to challenging conditions in a repeatable manner is limited by a finite repertoire of pre-evolved adaptive responses. Beyond this capacity, cells can use exploratory dynamics to cope with a…
We introduce Neuro-Vesicles, a framework that augments conventional neural networks with a missing computational layer: a dynamical population of mobile, discrete vesicles that live alongside the network rather than inside its tensors. Each…
Complex environments provide structured yet variable sensory inputs. To best exploit information from these environments, organisms must evolve the ability to anticipate consequences of unknown stimuli, and act on these predictions. We…
A hallmark of intelligence is the ability to autonomously learn new flexible, cognitive behaviors - that is, behaviors where the appropriate action depends not just on immediate stimuli (as in simple reflexive stimulus-response…
Intracellular transport is essential for maintaining proper cellular function in most eukaryotic cells, with perturbations in active transport resulting in several types of disease. Efficient delivery of critical cargos to specific…
The design of biological networks using bacteria as the basic elements of the network is initially motivated by a phenomenon called quorum sensing. Through quorum sensing, each bacterium performs sensing the medium and communicating it to…
Life occurs in concentrated `Ringer Solutions' derived from seawater that Lesser Blum studied for most of his life. As we worked together, Lesser and I realized that the questions asked of those solutions were quite different in biology…
Most neurons in peripheral sensory pathways initially respond vigorously when a preferred stimulus is presented, but adapt as stimulation continues. It is unclear how this phenomenon affects stimulus representation in the later stages of…
The interactions between proteins, DNA, and RNA in living cells constitute molecular networks that govern various cellular functions. To investigate the global dynamical properties and stabilities of such networks, we studied the cell-cycle…
Intelligent behavior in life-like systems often arises from the ability to gather, process, and act on information. While active matter provides a framework for studying life-like dynamics, it typically omits internal information-processing…
Many biological phenomena or social events critically depend on how information evolves in complex networks. However, a general theory to characterize information evolution is yet absent. Consequently, numerous unknowns remain about the…
Co-evolutionary adaptive mechanisms are not only ubiquitous in nature, but also beneficial for the functioning of a variety of systems. We here consider an adaptive network of oscillators with a stochastic, fitness-based, rule of…