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

协作研究：分布式生物系统中的搜索、信号和信息交换

• 批准号: 1038708
• 负责人: Deborah Gordon
• 金额: $ 9.5万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-01 至 2014-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1038708&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Search; Signals; Information

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.

生物，社会和计算机都是复杂的系统，其行为来自组件的相互作用。例如，有效的免疫反应需要数十亿个免疫细胞之间的协调相互作用，没有中心的控制点，而蚂蚁菌落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菌落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指导两个不同系统中的搜索策略，该项目将制定一个一般理论，描述了如何组织分散的生物网络以搜索，响应和适应不同的环境以及它们如何有效扩展到大尺寸。广泛的理论目标是了解网络的规模，结构和动态如何影响生物学功能。该项目将有助于将现场实验与计算建模相结合并为前大学，本科和研究生服务的跨学科教育计划。提出计划，以招募和培训代表性不足的团体的成员。调查人员在实现这一目标方面非常适合实现这一目标，因为新墨西哥大学是全国仅有的两所大学之一，他们既是少数派服务机构，又是一所卡内基很高的研究活动大学。与大学前教育项目的互动将使当地学生以一种参与和访问的方式使当地学生进入跨学科科学。