Collaborative Research: RoL: FELS: EAGER: Determining the Interplay of Long- and Short-Range Interactions in Emergent Biological Collective Behavior

生物具有显著的大规模组织和协调能力，如鱼群、植被模式或微生物垫。这种组织是如何发生的是一个悬而未决的问题。据推测，生物使用较短距离和较远距离的相互作用，如物理接触和化学交流，来组织和协调行为。然而，在大多数系统中，很难识别和量化这些相互作用。该项目将揭示反馈如何调节同步、协调和形成集合的能力，组如何调整键属性（如大小和组合），以及组如何跨多个集合控制更大规模的模式形成。在群居变形虫中，在短距离和远距离协调行为的相互作用类型是已知的。对这些变形虫的研究将允许开发方法来可视化这些相互作用，并在群体形成过程中首次量化它们。这些相互作用如何协同工作以协调单个群体中的个体和多个群体之间的协调将被检查。研究人员将把这些经验知识纳入一个理论模型，以做出一般性预测。该项目将通过实验和建模项目来培养本科生、研究生和博士后的研究能力。它还将通过整合本项目概念的课程来培养本科生的生物建模能力。自组织在整个生物世界中无处不在，了解它是如何自然发生的，以及它产生的紧急模式是我们控制这种过程的第一步。理论工作提出，这些相互作用之间的短期和/或长期相互作用和反馈可以驱动自组织，这些相互作用的不同混合导致不同的系统级结果。尽管有大量的理论工作，但这些机制的实验证据在很大程度上是缺乏的，主要是因为我们需要定量控制和读出的系统很少。研究人员将解决自组织的问题和由此产生的集体表型在细胞黏菌，盘状盘齿龙。优化和开发新的实验技术将允许量化短期和长期相互作用的动力学。将实验技术与理论框架相结合将有助于确定它们之间的相互作用如何导致集体行为。这个项目将揭示反馈如何调节同步、协调和形成集体的能力。该项目还可以确定生物体如何调整关键群体属性，如大小和组成，以及如何控制跨多个群体的大规模模式形成。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Living organisms are capable of remarkable large-scale organization and coordination, as seen in fish schools, vegetation patterns, or microbial mats. How such organization occurs is an open question. It is hypothesized that organisms use a mix of shorter-distance and longer-distance interactions, such as physical contact and chemical communication, to organize and coordinate behavior. However, in most systems it is hard to identify and quantify these interactions. This project will reveal how feedback can modulate the ability to synchronize, coordinate, and form collectives, how groups tune key properties such as size and composition, and how groups control larger-scale pattern formation across multiple collectives. In the social amoeba, the types of interactions that coordinate behavior at both short and long distances are known. Studies of these amoeba will allow the development of methods to visualize these interactions and quantify them for the first time, during group formation. How these interactions work together to coordinate individuals across a single group and coordinate between multiple groups will be examined. The researchers will incorporate this empirical knowledge into a theoretical model to make general predictions. This project will train undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs in research by involving them in the experimental and modeling projects. It will also train undergraduates in biological modeling via a course that will integrate concepts from this project.Self-organization is pervasive throughout the biological world and understanding how it naturally occurs and the emergent patterns it produces constitutes the first step towards our ability to control such processes. Theoretical work has proposed that short- and/or long-range interactions and feedback between these interactions could drive self-organization, with different mixes of such interactions leading to different system-level consequences. Despite prolific theoretical work, experimental evidence for these proposed mechanisms has largely been lacking, primarily because there are few systems where we have the level of quantitative control and readout required. The researchers will address questions of self-organization and the resulting collective phenotypes in the cellular slime mold, Dictyostelium discoideum. Optimizing and exploiting new experimental techniques will permit quantification of the dynamics of short and long-range interactions. Combining the experimental techniques with a theoretical framework will help establish how the interplay between them leads to collective behaviors. This project will reveal how feedback can modulate the ability to synchronize, coordinate, and form collectives. The project may also determine how organisms tune key group properties such as size and composition, and control larger-scale pattern formation across multiple collectives.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.