BCIP 2015 - BIOLOGICAL CELL INFORMATION PROCESSING WORKSHOP

Advances in experimental and computational techniques for exploring biological cellular function, both within individual cells and across populations of cells, have led to the revealing of increasingly complex systems of interacting processes. Cells respond to a myriad of mechanical and chemical signals from neighbouring cells, structures and the wider environment. These signals cause changes in cell behaviour including the production of other signals, both internal and external to the cell, and control of gene expression. Considering the initiating signals and latent information as ‘inputs’, and subsequent signals and behaviours as ‘outputs’, respectively, exactly how the cell processes the input signals to determine the appropriate (or, in the case of some diseases, perhaps, the ‘inappropriate’) output has yet to be fully understood. Yet, each of our own bodies seems to contain on the order of 1013 [1] of these ‘information-processing units’!
This workshop, co-hosted by the multi-disciplinary international conference on Unconventional Computing and Natural Computation, will bring together a wide range of biological and medical cellular experimentalists, computational theorists, computational modellers and other researchers with an interest in viewing biological cells, at least in part, as information processors. Topics may include, but are not limited to, experimental, computational and/or theoretical studies in: gene regulatory networks, extracellular and intracellular signalling networks, transport and channel gating systems and cellular (biological) computing. The intent is to facilitate communication and networking between holders of diverse perspectives in this fascinating area.