The Right Stuff:
Appropriate Mathematics for Evolutionary and Developmental
Biology
We are looking for `the right stuff', i.e. appropriate mathematical and computational tools/models for describing, studying, building or understanding fundamental aspects of natural living systems or living systems as-they-could-be (whether carbon-based, digital or otherwise) as opposed to inanimate systems.
Classical mathematical methods of population genetics tend to set out a fixed space of possibilities for the evolution of gene frequencies within a population. Unfortunately, by circumscribing the state-space at the outset, such an approach excludes the possibly of expressing change in developmental mechanisms or new evolutionary innovations such as body plans. While differential equation descriptions have proved crucial for understanding physics and chemistry and aspects of evolution, they seem to have largely failed as an appropriate language for some key aspects of biological systems. Living systems present special difficulties for such a mathematical treatment to particular problems of (1) death, damage, and development, (2) replication, inheritance and maintenance, (3) the relationship between genetic information and its realization via expression, and (4) the origin and evolution of biological complexity in populations of developing individuals.
The workshop strives to identify aspects special to living systems outside the scope of classical formal and conceptual tools, that can be treated formally with mathematical tools or computational models appropriate for natural (and artificial) biology.
Co-Chairs
Program Committee Members
The workshop participants are required to register
for the ALIFE 6 conference.
Those who would like to attend but do not have an presentation accepted
for the workshop, please register for ALIFE 6
and then send e-mail to
nehaniv@u-aizu.ac.jp giving your
name and affiliation.
Submissions of 2-4 page extended abstracts (plain ASCII only, due to
format conversion/compatibility problems, no postscript, MS-Word, or other
typeset files please) and questions about submissions should be directed
to arrive by 20 April via e-mail to Prof. Chrystopher L. Nehaniv at nehaniv@u-aizu.ac.jp.
Submissions should show authors' names, affiliations and contact information.
Please use the subject "ALIFE 6: TRS submission" when making
your e-mail submission. Hardcopies may be sent to:
Prof. Chrystopher Nehaniv
The ALIFE 6 Right Stuff Workshop
University of Aizu
Japan 965-8580
April 20, 1998: Workshop papers due
May 15, 1998: Notification
June 26, 1998: Workshop
We are publishing the accepted extended abstracts in a University of Hertfordshire Technical Report, and pending approval of the ALIFE 6 organizers, we plan organize a special journal issue dedicated to issues of the workshop.
The Workshop will comprise a few keynote talks, contributed talks and a panel discussion with participants from different research areas.
9:00-9:25
Chrystopher Nehaniv (Univ. Aizu, Japan & Univ. Hertfordshire, UK) and
Günter Wagner (Yale University, USA):
The Right Stuff:
Appropriate Mathematics for Evolutionary and Developmental Biology
9:25-9:55
Invited Talk
Giuseppe Pirillo (IAMI-CNR, Italy):
Automatically Finding Genes in Genomes
10:00-10:30
Invited Talk
James P. Crutchfield (Santa Fe Institute & University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A.):
The Evolutionary Unfolding of Complexity
10:30-11:00 COFFEE BREAK
11:00-11:25
Paulien Hogeweg (Utrecht University, Netherlands):
Tangled Hierarchies and Tangled Spaces in Development and Evolution:
Computational methods and biological insights
11:25-11:50
Stefan Reimann (GMD, Sankt Augustin, Germany):
Structure, Symmetry, and Decomposition
13:00-13:30
Invited Talk
Erik van Nimwegen (Santa Fe Institute, U.S.A.):
The Statistical Dynamics of Epochal Evolution
13:30-13:55
Lionel Barnett (University of Sussex, UK):
Applying Markov Process Analysis to Evolutionary Systems
13:55-14:20
Hamid Bolouri (Hertfordshire, UK and Caltech, USA) & Rod Adams, Stella
George, Alistair Rust (Univ. Hertfordshire, UK):
Molecular self-organisation in a developmental model for the evolution
of large-scale Artificial Neural Networks
14:20-14:45
Ehud Shapiro, Doron Lancet, Daniel Segre (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel):
Molecular Transition Systems: A Computational embodiment
for the Graded Autocatalysis Replication Domain (GARD) model
14:45-15:10
Tim Taylor (University of Edinburgh, UK):
Using Bottom-Up Models to Investigate the Evolution of Life: Steps Towards
an Improved Methodology
15:10-15:35 COFFEE BREAK
15:35 -16:00
Peter Dittrich (University of Dortmund, Germany):
Real Evolution in Artificial Chemistries
16:00-17:00 Panel and General Discussion
17:00 END OF WORKSHOP
Misha Kapushesky (Cornell University, USA):
Pattern formation by lateral inhibition
C. L. Nehaniv (Univ. Hertfordshire, UK) and J. L. Rhodes
(Univ. California, Berkeley, USA):
Algebra, Evolution and Complexity of Living Systems
D. Repsilber and F. Scolz (Federal Research Centre for Forestry
and Forest Products, Germany):
Genetic Networks as Model for Regulatory Domain applied in
Ecological Genetics