UK Multi-Scale Biology Network

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Life, from single cells such as bacteria, to populations of plants and animals is complex and multi-layered. Processes acting at one scale can have profound effects on a system at larger and smaller scales. For example, single bacterial cells, whose size is a fraction of the width of a human hair, can form colonies whose behaviour is massively influenced by their collective interaction. Molecular and physical events at the tip of growing plant roots or shoots can have profound effects on the whole plant, and therefore on food production. Diseases that manifest themselves at the scale of whole organs (e.g. lungs, hearts, livers) often arise due to microscopic changes at the level of the individual cells that make up those organs. Multi-scale biology seeks to improve our understanding of these multi-layered biological systems by developing new approaches that combine biological sciences with other disciplines such as mathematics, physics, computer science and engineering. This means gathering data at multiple relevant scales (e.g. single cell and whole tissue scale; individual plants/animals and farm or ecosystem scale) and developing tools for reasoning about and modelling such systems whilst taking into account how changes at one scale may impact the system at other scales. Multi-scale biology presents many new challenges to the relevant disciplines, and many opportunities to exploit capabilities developed in different contexts. For example, weather forecasting and climate modeling rely on sophisticated computer models and techniques of data analysis which could be adapted for use in the biological context. Experience in those fields demonstrates how important is the availability of large amount of quantitative data defined over space, time, and across scales, and suggests that a major shift is required in the biosciences to make routine the generation of similarly detailed data. On the other hand, many advances have been made in the analysis and computer modelling of multiscale biological systems, but many of the models are hard to re-use or combine with other tools in novel ways. Thus a community effort is required to share best practice, to encourage the development and adoption of standards for sharing data and models, to identify opportunities in the field, and to bring together teams of scientists to address grand challenges in the biosciences, such as global food security, sustainability, healthcare, and the reduction and replacement of animals in research. The proposed network will run community building events (where many scientists from different disciplines give short "pitches" about their work and how it can contribute to multi-scale biology), hackathons and study groups (where teams work together over a week in an intensive way to develop computational tools or models), and a summer school (providing training in multi-scale biology). Furthermore, the network will host a website to facilitate community interactions and resource sharing, and support exchange visits between research groups to help launch new collaborations.