SOME CHALLENGES AND RESULTS FOR MATHEMATICAL AND COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY
Dr Chrystopher L. Nehaniv, Department of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire

Abstract: Around the field of Bioinformatics, in addition to such important areas as molecular phylogeny tree reconstruction, traditional population genetics, and analyses of nucleotide and amino acid sequences, are some intriguing new challenges regarding appropriate mathematical and computational tools for the successful identification, posing and solution of biological questions. These issues serve to situate a Constructive Biological viewpoint in a framework of signal transducation and complex dynamics, which are now of growing importance as we move beyond the lowest levels of understanding being obtained through the present success of genome sequencing.

We will survey some of these challenges in the areas of evolutionary and developmental biology, rigorous measures of the (hierarchical) complexity of biological systems, new results on the genetic code and digital evolution (in real biological as well as software systems), as well as issues of channels of meaning for populations of embodied evolving agents. We report new results, together with the emerging vision for the coalescence of biology with the sciences of computation.

This seminar was held at the Department of Computer Science, Royal Holloway, University of London on 25 May 1999.

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