Biological Networks across Scales—The Theoretical and Empirical Foundations for Time-Varying Complex Networks that Connect Structure and Function across Levels of Biological Organization

Many biological systems across scales of size and complexity exhibit a time-varying complex network structure that emerges and self-organizes as a result of interactions with the environment. Network interactions optimize some intrinsic cost functions that are unknown and involve for example energy efficiency, robustness, resilience, and frailty. A wide range of networks exist in biology, from gene regulatory networks important for organismal...