TY - BOOK

T1 - Spatial Models and Networks of Living Systems

AU - Juul, Jeppe Søgaard

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - When studying the dynamics of living systems, insight can often be gained by developing a mathematical model that can predict future behaviour of the systemor help classify system characteristics. However, in living cells, organisms, andespecially groups of interacting individuals, a large number of different factorsinfluence the time development of the system. This often makes it challenging toconstruct a mathematical model from which to draw conclusions.One traditional way of capturing the dynamics in a mathematical model is toformulate a set of coupled differential equations for the essential variables of thesystem. However, this approach disregards any spatial structure of the system,which may potentially change the behaviour drastically. An alternative approachis to construct a cellular automaton with nearest neighbour interactions, or evento model the system as a complex network with interactions defined by networktopology.In this thesis I first describe three different biological models of ageing andcancer, in which spatial structure is important for the system dynamics. I then turnto describe characteristics of ecosystems consisting of three cyclically interactingspecies. Such systems are known to be stabilized by spatial structure. Finally, Ianalyse data from a large mobile phone network and show that people who aretopologically close in the network have similar communication patterns.This main part of the thesis is based on six different articles, which I haveco-authored during my three year PhD at the Center for Models of Life. Apartfrom these, I have co-authored another six articles, which also relate to spatialmodels of living systems. These are included as appendixes, but not described indetail in the thesis.

AB - When studying the dynamics of living systems, insight can often be gained by developing a mathematical model that can predict future behaviour of the systemor help classify system characteristics. However, in living cells, organisms, andespecially groups of interacting individuals, a large number of different factorsinfluence the time development of the system. This often makes it challenging toconstruct a mathematical model from which to draw conclusions.One traditional way of capturing the dynamics in a mathematical model is toformulate a set of coupled differential equations for the essential variables of thesystem. However, this approach disregards any spatial structure of the system,which may potentially change the behaviour drastically. An alternative approachis to construct a cellular automaton with nearest neighbour interactions, or evento model the system as a complex network with interactions defined by networktopology.In this thesis I first describe three different biological models of ageing andcancer, in which spatial structure is important for the system dynamics. I then turnto describe characteristics of ecosystems consisting of three cyclically interactingspecies. Such systems are known to be stabilized by spatial structure. Finally, Ianalyse data from a large mobile phone network and show that people who aretopologically close in the network have similar communication patterns.This main part of the thesis is based on six different articles, which I haveco-authored during my three year PhD at the Center for Models of Life. Apartfrom these, I have co-authored another six articles, which also relate to spatialmodels of living systems. These are included as appendixes, but not described indetail in the thesis.

UR - https://soeg.kb.dk/permalink/45KBDK_KGL/fbp0ps/alma99122946391205763

M3 - Ph.D. thesis

BT - Spatial Models and Networks of Living Systems

PB - The Niels Bohr Institute, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen

ER -