Objectives and scope
The scientific objective of the
FUNCDYN
program is to establish a European research community in functional
dynamics of complex chemical and biological systems. The aim is
to make new tools and methods for
quantitative modelling of behavior, development and morphology of
biological systems with special emphasis on the incorporation of
dynamic information. A major goal of functional dynamics is the study
of systems where dynamic behavior is in itself part of biological
function.
Living organisms are characterized by a plethora of chemical and
structural details at numerous complexity levels making comprehensive
understanding and modelling at every spatial and temporal scale an
unattainable task. One aim of FUNCDYN is the development of systematic
methods for reduction of model complexity by restricting the modelling
to relevant temporal and spatial scales without loosing the
quantitative predictive ability. Another aim is the development of
equipment and experimental protocols for the efficient collection of
relevant dynamic data.
Analogous spatio-temporal problems in chemistry and physics have been
succesfully approached by implementation of methods derived from the
theory of non-linear dynamics. An important instrument of FUNCDYN is to
transfer such methods originally developed for studies of
non-biological systems, to the study of dynamically similar
bio-systems, by integrating on a European level researchers from the
field of non-linear dynamics with researchers from biochemistry and
biology. Another important instrument is to encourage the use of
expensive equipment scattered over Europe for in vivo large scale
collection of data on system dynamics.
