Hey City Zen!

I don't often post about our science on this blog, but it is also my Zen, I am going to start posting updates of that dimension here as well.

In a paper in the journal Journal of the Royal Society Interface,  in a collaboration started long ago with Manuel Marques-Pita and Santosh Manicka, we show that a large amount of redundancy exists in how genes, proteins and other biochemical components process signals. This results in much robustness to perturbations, allowing biological systems to exist in a stable or near-critical dynamical regime, despite being composed of thousands of biochemical variables which would ordinarily result in chaotic dynamics.

The measure of effective connectivity we developed captures redundancy in automata networks and is shown in the paper to be highly predictive of dynamical regime of biochemical systems ranging from flower development to breast cancer in humans. The approach thus adds empirical validity to several  well-known hypotheses in theoretical biology: 1) that canalization adds robustness to biological development put forth by C.H. Waddington, 2) that redundancy is essential for evolvability put forth by Michael Conrad, and 3) that biological organisms exist in a near-critical dynamical regime put forth by Stuart Kauffman. The new work further connects the three hypotheses by equating canalization with redundancy, providing a  measure of effective connectivity based on dynamical redundancy, and further showing that this measure very accurately predicts the dynamical regime of biochemical networks.

Beyond the biochemical models we tested, because automata networks are canonical examples of complex systems, the work suggests that redundancy and canalization should be important design principles of resilient and evolvable organizations.

You can read the article following the links in reference:

Manicka Santosh, Marques-Pita Manuel and Rocha Luis M. [2022]. "Effective connectivity determines the critical dynamics of biochemical networks." J. R. Soc. Interface. 19(186):20210659. doi: 10.1098/rsif.2021.0659.

Labels: #Biology, #Complexity, #ComplexNetworks, #ComplexSystems, #Evolution, #Resilience, #Robustness, #Science

I had forgotten to post this live set, which I did in December in Madrid for the cocktail reception at the Complex Networks 2021 conference. It goes from Deodato's Jazzy/Groovy take on Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra to techno (the set went on to a few more techno tracks ommitted here), but strongly grounded on Disco/Funk/EuroDisco. Tracklist below. Also Sprach the Jam is available on E-Trash's site (Username: apollo, Password: feelingfree).

Labels: #Disco, #DJ, #Eurodisco, #Funk, #Jazz, #Music, #Techno

2021 was a year full of personal change. Despite the pandemic, it was really a very good year personally. I switched jobs, with awesome conditions and some of our work was published in great venues. It does feel good to have your work appreciated!  It was also a great year for music and I even got to DJ again a little. I am sure I missed really excellent stuff, but here is the best City Zen of the year that made my radar. Top 40 Albums, Top 110 Tracks, Top 30 Remixes/Edits (from E-Trash's DJ sets),  Live albums and EPs. The top tracks and remixes are assembled in a Spotify List as well.

Labels: #2021, #BestOf, #Music