Complexity Thoughts: Issue #7
Unraveling complexity: building knowledge, one paper at a time
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Networks and Complex Systems Foundations
Dismantling the information flow in complex interconnected systems
This paper challenges the traditional assumption that structural metrics alone are sufficient to gain insights about how complex systems operate. Using a damaging protocol explicitly accounting for flow dynamics, they show that it is possible to drive the system towards functional fragmentation before full structural disintegration (applications to biological and infrastructural networks).
Laplacian renormalization group for heterogeneous networks
The recent framework for statistical physics of complex information dynamics allows to introduce Kadanoff-like supernodes and develop a renormalization group approach (a cornerstone of the modern theory of universality and phase transitions) to reduce the size of complex networks while keeping intact some of their features.
Network Medicine
Mitochondrial complexome reveals quality-control pathways of protein import
Mitochondria are intracellular organelles that contain a large set of proteins to help them produce energy, among other functions. The authors found over 5,000 protein structures and their interactions, including those involved in cell metabolism, signaling, and quality control. This paper provides a comprehensive resource for better understanding the vital role of mitochondria in cellular function, and can have high impact for network medicine, without being a paper manifestly about it.
See also a summary by the leading author.
Synthetic biology
Synthetic morphology with agential materials
Bioengineering is one of the most exciting fields in science today, where we get to use our understanding of biology to solve important problems in medicine and the environment. We're moving beyond just tinkering with individual cells, and exploring the amazing abilities of multicellular systems to adapt and solve problems. By looking at these systems as "agential materials" with their own goals and problem-solving powers, we have the potential to revolutionize not just developmental biology, but also regenerative medicine and robotics.
Information processing and computing
Information processing through acid-base reactions? Yes, that’s possible. By encoding binary information using acids and bases, the authors perform operations such as majority and negation, and then they use these building blocks to implement complex computations like digital circuits and neural networks. They demonstrated this by using a robotic fluid handling device to orchestrate acid-base reactions, and validated the implementation of a neural network classifier on various images with near-perfect accuracy, and a 99% similarity to the in-silico classifier.
Oldies but goodies
Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism
The famous essay by Eldredge and Gould (1972) which criticizes the theory of phyletic gradualism and argues that evolution proceeds in a pattern of punctuated equilibrium.