Introduction to Special Issue ECCS’10 in Theory in Biosciences

Abstract

The European Conference on Complex Systems 2010 (ECCS’10) took place in September 2010 and was located at Lisbon in an excellent conference environment. The conference attracted more than 500 participants from a whole range of scientists having a joint interest in complex systems science. Two major tracks of the conference were devoted to biological systems on different scales, ranging from molecular to ecological interactions. Biological systems created an important motivation to study complex systems right from the beginning of the movement. But it becomes increasingly clear that both fields—complex and biological systems—become even more entangled as complex systems deliver new ways to understand biological complexity, and the more the biological systems are investigated it becomes apparent that evolution has already invented numerous ways to tackle ‘complexity’ in the wider sense. In the spirit of design, it is always worth first looking at the answer of the question: ‘how has nature solved the problem’? The papers collected in this special issue of Theory in Biosciences represent a part of the research presented during ECCS’10. Complex systems research is surely at the innovation boundary of modern interand multi-disciplinary science. The journal ‘Theory in Biosciences’ has supported this process for quite some time, and we are pleased to add another ECCS contribution with this special issue. Network theory is one of the current major branches of complex systems science. The contribution of Susan Khor on structural characteristics of protein residue networks takes the subject of linking proteins much further: now the aspect of protein folding is included. The first protein networks available in the literature have been constructed on experimental binding evidence only. Unfortunately, the assays used proved unreliable in certain cases for certain proteins, making the results and their implications to some degree doubtful. Finding the structural reasons why proteins can connect or bind to each other provides much needed additional information on the reliability of such protein binding data. Moreover, the analysis gives some insight in the true reasons why certain proteins can bind to each other, and others do not. The special issue contains two contributions on molecular kinetics. Reaction systems are generally important for complex systems, as they can be compared with agentbased models which are equally based on rules, i.e. events like reactions. Moreover, they are generic models to study the action of feedback loops and stochastic noise. In their contribution A. Lindo, B. Faria and F. de Abreu study a model of molecular tunable kinetic proofreading, which is based on the actions of feedback loops. The second contribution by A. Filisetti, A. Graudenzi, R. Serra, M. Villani, R.M. Fuchslin, N. Packard, S.A. Kauffman and I. Poli on stochastic autocatalytic reaction systems extends the originally deterministic theory of autocatalytic cycles by Stuart Kauffman to a new stochastic setting. The paper is at the end of some extensions based on early criticisms of Kauffman’s model, making the whole framework more robust. M. Kirkilionis (&) Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick, Zeeman Building, CV4 7AL Coventry, UK e-mail: mak@maths.warwick.ac.uk URL: http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/*mak/