SICOMORO: Searching and exploiting Symmetries In biological Communities: Modelling, Reachability, and Observability
Ayuda CNS2023-144886 financiada por MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 y por la Unión Europea NextGenerationEU/PRTR.
2021 - 2023. Endowment: 196.495,91 EUR
Project summary
Biological communities are populations of various species interacting in a common location. Examples include microbial communities, which are ubiquitous in Nature and are increasingly used in biotechnological and biomedical applications. They are nonlinear systems whose dynamics can be accurately described by models of ordinary differential equations.
Control-theoretic properties like observability and controllability inform about the possibility of inferring the unmeasured variables of such models, and of driving a system from an initial to a nearby state. Sometimes, the lack of these properties can be traced back to the existence of mathematical symmetries in the model equations. On the other hand, symmetries can also have implications for the system’s ability to adapt to environmental or internal changes. However, finding and analysing such symmetries is mathematically complex and computationally expensive.
The SICOMORO project will:
- (i) yield methodological advances concerning the search for symmetries,
- (ii) implement them in performant software tools,
- (iii) apply them to characterize the symmetries in biological communities of biomedical and biotechnological interest, and
- (iv) exploit this knowledge to facilitate their control.
Research team
Alejandro F. Villaverde (UVIGO, Systems & Control Engineering)
Work team
Sandra Díaz Seoane (UVIGO, Systems & Control Engineering)
Xabier Rey Barreiro (UVIGO, Systems & Control Engineering)