Biological Dynamics at Intermediate Time Scales

中间时间尺度的生物动力学

• 批准号: 0827460
• 负责人: Alan Hastings
• 金额: $ 46.02万
• 依托单位: University of California-Davis
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-09-01 至 2012-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0827460&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Biological; Dynamics; Intermediate; Time; Scales

The goal of this project is to develop a general theory for the dynamics of biological systems at intermediate time scales. At short time scales, the current state or the current direction of a biological system provides a good description of the future state. At very long time scales, systems settle into predictable patterns that are relatively easy to study. Intermediate time scales lie in between these two states and may include rapid, and harder to predict yet important, changes in system behavior. As a first step toward understanding intermediate time scales, specific case studies based on a) ecological models with a small number of interacting species, b) neural models with a few neurons or c) epidemic models will be studied numerically on a computer. These numerical results will then be generalized using mathematical theory based on the study of dynamical physical systems. The resulting generalizations will allow the determination of when phenomena like turbulence (apparently irregular changes in population size) or bursting (rapid, apparently random large changes in population size separated by periods without change) will arise in systems with interacting species distributed over space, and also in a variety of other biological systems.The theory developed will be general and of wide applicability across levels of biological organization ranging from the cellular level to neuroscience to the dynamics of individual populations to ecosystems. A particular set of important applications will be fisheries management, the impact of global climate change on ecosystem services, and the dynamics of diseases, all of which will require prediction on scales appropriate for human dominated systems. In the course of this work postdoctoral scholars and graduate students will receive interdisciplinary training that will develop the human capital to meet future challenges in understanding complex biological systems.

该项目的目标是发展中间时间尺度生物系统动力学的一般理论。 在短时间尺度上，生物系统的当前状态或当前方向可以很好地描述未来状态。在很长的时间尺度上，系统会陷入相对容易研究的可预测模式。 中间时间尺度位于这两种状态之间，可能包括系统行为的快速、难以预测但重要的变化。作为理解中间时间尺度的第一步，基于 a) 具有少量相互作用物种的生态模型，b) 具有少量神经元的神经模型或 c) 流行病模型的具体案例研究将在计算机上进行数值研究。 然后，这些数值结果将使用基于动力物理系统研究的数学理论进行推广。由此产生的概括将允许确定诸如湍流（种群规模明显不规则的变化）或爆发（种群规模快速、明显随机的大变化，由没有变化的时期分隔的种群规模快速、明显随机的大变化）等现象何时出现在具有分布在空间上的相互作用物种的系统中，以及也适用于各种其他生物系统。所开发的理论将具有普遍性并广泛适用于生物组织的各个层面，从细胞水平到神经科学，再到个体群体的动态，再到生态系统。 一组特定的重要应用将是渔业管理、全球气候变化对生态系统服务的影响以及疾病的动态，所有这些都需要对适合人类主导系统的规模进行预测。 在这项工作的过程中，博士后学者和研究生将接受跨学科培训，以培养人力资本，以应对理解复杂生物系统的未来挑战。