Looping Network Meetings

#81 March 2, 2026

Monday 15:00 (Paris/Warsaw time)

Mark Fricker (University of Oxford)

Adaptive Biological Networks

Abstract:
Biological networks occur across scales ranging from sub-cellular endoplasmic reticulum, through vascular systems in plants and animals, to whole organisms such as fungi and slime moulds. We are interested in the dynamic interplay between the morphology of these networks and the functional flows that play out across them. However, developing a coherent framework has been challenging and rather fragmented. In some cases, we have sufficient empirical data to build predictive mathematical models of fluid flows through a physical network structure. At the next level of abstraction, we may infer network properties from graph-theoretic metrics as a proxy for function. The next level is bio-inspired algorithms that capture aspects of biological behaviour, but may not reflect any specific underlying mechanistic processes. Perhaps, the most abstract level is development of agent-based functional-dynamic networks with discretised space and time where it is possible to explore different rule sets and parameter space. The strengths and limitations of these approaches will be discussed.

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