Collaborative Research: Search, Signals and Information Exchange in Distributed Biological Systems

生物体、社会和计算机都是复杂的系统，它们的行为都是由组件的相互作用产生的。例如，有效的免疫反应需要数十亿个免疫细胞之间没有中央控制点的协调相互作用，而蚂蚁群体的行为来自数百万蚂蚁之间的分布式通信。这项研究将研究蚂蚁群体和免疫系统如何形成分布式信息交换网络。通过详细研究分布式交互网络如何在两个不同的系统中指导搜索策略，该项目将制定一个一般理论，描述分散的生物网络是如何组织起来的，以搜索、响应和适应不同的环境，以及它们如何有效地扩大到大规模。该项目的广泛理论目标是了解网络的规模、结构和动力学如何影响生物功能。该项目将有助于一个将现场实验与计算建模相结合的跨学科教育计划，并为大学预科、本科生和研究生服务。提出了招募和培训代表性不足群体成员的计划。调查人员很好地实现了这一点，因为新墨西哥大学是美国仅有的两所既是少数族裔服务机构又是卡内基高级研究活动大学的大学之一。与大学前教育项目的互动将使当地学生以一种具有吸引力和可获得性的方式接触跨学科科学。

Organisms, societies and computers are all complex systems whose behavior emerges from the interactions of components. For example, effective immune response requires coordinated interactions between billions of immune cells with no central point of control, and the behavior of ant colonies emerges from distributed communication between millions of ants. This research will examine how ant colonies and immune systems form distributed information exchange networks. By studying in detail how distributed interaction networks guide searching strategies in two distinct systems, this project will formulate a general theory describing how decentralized biological networks are organized to search, respond and adapt to different environments, and how they effectively scale up to large sizes. The broad theoretical goal is to understand how network size, structure and dynamics affect biological function.The project will contribute to an interdisciplinary education program that integrates field experiments with computational modeling and serves pre-college, undergraduate and graduate students. Plans are presented to recruit and train members of underrepresented groups. The investigators are well situated to achieve this, as the University of New Mexico is one of only two universities in the nation that are both a Minority Serving Institution and a Carnegie Very High Research Activity University. Interactions with pre-college education projects will expose local students to interdisciplinary science in a way that is engaging and accessible.