Remarks on Interconnections, Modularity, and Dynamics

From Q-bio

For systems made up of interconnected components, it would be desirable to be able to deduce global behaviors through a bottom-up analysis, based on the knowledge of the behaviors of the individual components. Two sources of difficulty in this modular approach are (a) impedance or "dynamic retroactivity" effects due to resource sharing, and (b) feedback loops that expose modes of behavior that were "hidden" when individual subsystems had been studied in isolation. This talk, which is based on research done in collaboration with David Angeli, Domitilla Del Vecchio, and others, discusses mathematical concepts and theoretical results that address some of these issues, including the use of monotone systems theory to deal with the "hidden behavior" problem, and the introduction of a modeling framework to represent dynamic retroactivity effects.