Many biological systems at different scales - proteins, cell colonies, bacteria and animal groups- are composed by multiple functional units interacting with each other in a non-trivial way. As a consequence, these systems often display remarkable collective properties, which produce effects that go well beyond the behavior of the single individual.
An archetypical example at the macro scale is flocking, where global coherence and collective motion emerge from inter-individual interactions. Another example at the micro-scale is RNA-based regulation of gene expression. In many such cases, the system as a whole can be schematized as a network of interacting units. From a mechanistic perspective a crucial question is therefore to understand what are the features, in terms of nature of interactions, topology of the network, and individual dynamics, that determine the behavior of the network at collective level. In this project we pursue these issues using concepts and approaches from Statistical Physics. We will exploit our expertise on ordering and out-of-equilibrium phenomena in condensed matter, and our more recent research on living active systems and regulatory networks, to develop novel theoretical models and explain experimental findings.
