Motivation and Scope

Gene regulatory networks play a central role in the evolution and development of biological systems. Any evolutionary change in neural and morphological features depends on the reorganization of the gene regulatory network. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to a systems-level understanding of the structure and functionality of gene regulatory networks in the field of computational systems biology aiming at evolutionary reconstruction of regulation networks based on biological data and evolving in silico regulatory networks producing complex dynamics from commonly found regulatory motifs.

This special session attempts to promote a stronger interdisciplinary integration of expertise from researchers with different backgrounds. Topics include but are not limited to:


• Evolutionary reconstruction of gene regulatory networks (GRNs)
• Domain knowledge incorporation in evolutionary modeling of GRNs
• Evolution of regulatory motifs such as repressors and oscillators
• Modeling and analysis of metabolic pathways using evolutionary methods
• Robustness and evolvability analysis of GRNs
• Motif discovery using evolutionary methods
• Evolving GRNs for signal transduction
• Evolving GRNs for neural development
• Evolving GRNs for morphological development
• Artificial embryogeny for evolutionary design of complex structures