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Complex systems are characterized by their emergent behavior as a non-trivial result of the evolution of a considerable number of microscopic units that interact with each other. Expressed in other words: the study of complex systems seeks to understand the behavior and properties of the whole system that can not be derived directly from the study of the properties of its parts in isolation.
This is the essence of the research of complex systems, where the nature of the units is irrelevant. Associated strategies to address the study of a specific phenomenon, then, may be widely shared by a large number of phenomena characteristic of various disciplines. Even we can say that the complexity of the science itself is the result of the fusion of different disciplines and approaches on the same challenge. Therefore, the study of complex systems integrates problems and merges methodologies that can have very different origins.
The creation of the UBICS will join efforts of several groups of related research that will:
Webinar 16/07/2020
Date: 16 July, 16h (CET, GMT+2, Barcelona/Madrid/Paris/Berlin)
Speaker: Ernesto Estrada, IUMA, Universidad de Zaragoza
Title: “Fractional diffusion on the human proteome as an alternative explanation to the multi-organ damage of SARS CoV-2"
Link to the webinar: https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/a13864e69a1b4ea28d116e5bba005662
Abstract:
SARS CoV-2 is the new coronavirus causing the pandemic known as COVID-19. This respiratory disease is characterized by multi-organ and systemic damages in patients. The abundance of ACE2 on human organs has been claimed as responsible for such multi-organ spread of the virus damages. However, once on circulation the virus could spread to practically every organ in the human body as
ACE2 is ubiquitous on endothelia and smooth muscle cells of virtually all organs. Contrastingly, SARS CoV-2 only damages selectively a few organs. Here, we develop the hypothesis that the effects of the SARS CoV-2 virus can be spread through the human protein-protein interaction (PPI) network in a subdiffusive way. We then elaborate a time-fractional diffusion model on networks which allow
us to study this phenomenon. Starting the diffusion from the SARS CoV-2 Spike protein to the human PPI network we show here that the pertubations can spread across the whole network in very few steps. Consequently, we discover a few potential routes of propagation of these perturbations from proteins mainly expressed in the lungs to proteins mainly expressed in other different tissues, such as
the heart, cerebral cortex, thymus, lymph node, testis, prostate, liver, small intestine, duodenum, kidney, among others already reported as damaged by COVID-19.
Barcelona 17/07/2020
"Complex Systems and COVID-19" : Cicle de Webinars sobre Sistemes Complexos enfocats en el COVID-19 organitzat per l'UBICS i complexitat.cat. Enfocat per a tothom interessat en els Sistemes Complexos i els seus actuals camps d’aplicació.
11 June - Manlio de Domenico, CoMuNe Lab, Fondazione Bruno Kessler
"Tackling complexity: foundations and appplications."
18 June - Nuria Oliver, Data-Pop Alliance & ELLIS (The European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems)
"Data Science to fight against COVID-19"
25 June - Santiago F. Elena, Instituto de Biología Integrativa de Sistemas, CSIC
“Identifying early-warning signals for the sudden transition from health to disease stages by dynamical network biomarkers”
02 July - Alex Arenas, DEIM, Universitat Rovira i Virgili
“Epidemics and mobility”
16 July - Ernesto Estrada, IUMA
"Fractional diffusion on the human proteome as an alternative explanation to the multi-organ damage of SARS CoV-2."
Totes les xerrades es faran a les 16h.
Estigues atent a la nostra web o a la de Complexitat.cat per els links dels webinars de les pròximes xerrades.
UBICS projects 13/07/2020
Date: 16 July, 16h (CET, GMT+2, Barcelona/Madrid/Paris/Berlin) Speaker: Ernesto Estrada, IUMA, Universidad de Zaragoza Title: “Fractional diffusion on the human proteome as an alternative explanation to the multi-organ damage of SARS CoV-2" Link to the webinar: https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/a13864e69a1b4ea28d116e5bba005662 Abstract: SARS CoV-2 is the new coronavirus causing the pandemic known as COVID-19. This respiratory disease is characterized by multi-organ and systemic damages in patients. The abundance of ACE2 on human organs has been claimed as responsible for such multi-organ spread of the virus damages. However, once on circulation the virus could spread to practically every organ in the human body as ACE2 is ubiquitous on endothelia and smooth muscle cells of virtually all organs. Contrastingly, SARS CoV-2 only damages selectively a few organs. Here, we develop the hypothesis that the effects of the SARS CoV-2 virus can be spread through the human protein-protein interaction (PPI) network in a subdiffusive way. We then elaborate a time-fractional diffusion model on networks which allow us to study this phenomenon. Starting the diffusion from the SARS CoV-2 Spike protein to the human PPI network we show here that the pertubations can spread across the whole network in very few steps. Consequently, we discover a few potential routes of propagation of these perturbations from proteins mainly expressed in the lungs to proteins mainly expressed in other different tissues, such as the heart, cerebral cortex, thymus, lymph node, testis, prostate, liver, small intestine, duodenum, kidney, among others already reported as damaged by COVID-19.
UBICS products 26/06/2020
Date: 2 July, 16h (CET, GMT+2, Barcelona/Madrid/Paris/Berlin) Speaker: Alex Arenas, DEIM, Universitat Rovira i Virgili Title: “Epidemics and mobility” Link to the webinar: https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/8c04df402c3e4422a66fd1133249678b Abstract: Reaction–diffusion processes have been widely used to study epidemics in networked metapopulations. In the context of epidemics, reaction processes are understood as contagions within each subpopulation (patch), while diffusion represents the mobility of individuals between patches. Recently, the characteristics of human mobility, such as its recurrent nature, have been proven crucial to understand the phase transition to endemic epidemic states. Here, we present a framework able to cope with the elementary epidemic processes, the spatial distribution of populations and the commuting mobility patterns. We will show after, how this framework has been adapted to describe the COVID-19 pandemic.
UBICS products 19/06/2020
Date: 25 June, 16h (CET, GMT+2, Barcelona/Madrid/Paris/Berlin) Speaker: Santiago F. Elena, Institute for Integrative Systems Biology, CSIC Title: "Why some patients develop a severe syndrome while other remain asymptomatic? Early-warning signals associated with the phase transition from health to disease." You can see the webinar here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMY08wJQndU&list=PLf7A47_ENtnLkXJ8QPspRIT5a0zz-1nPd&index=6 Abstract: One of the most outstanding observations during COVID-19 pandemics is that some patients have an asymptomatic infection while others suffer severe symptoms, some of them becoming fatal. Is there any relation between the global gene expression state of patients and they propensity to suffer an asymptomatic infection? Is it possible to identify which genes, or groups of them within a regulation network, may serve as markers to predict the clinical fate of a patient before the presence of any symptom? In this seminar I will introduce the fundamentals of the theory of Dynamical Biomarkers of Networks (DBN), illustrating their application to the analysis of transcriptomic data during disease progression in a pathosystem model.
