Randomness with constraints: constructing minimal models for high-dimensional biology

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Nemenman, Ilya, Mehta, Pankaj
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Nemenman, Ilya
Mehta, Pankaj
author_facet Nemenman, Ilya
Mehta, Pankaj
contents Biologists and physicists have a rich tradition of modeling living systems with simple models composed of a few interacting components. Despite the remarkable success of this approach, it remains unclear how to use such finely tuned models to study complex biological systems composed of numerous heterogeneous, interacting components. One possible strategy for taming this biological complexity is to embrace the idea that many biological behaviors we observe are ``typical'' and can be modeled using random systems that respect biologically-motivated constraints. Here, we review recent works showing how this approach can be used to make close connection with experiments in biological systems ranging from neuroscience to ecology and evolution and beyond. Collectively, these works suggest that the ``random-with-constraints'' paradigm represents a promising new modeling strategy for capturing experimentally observed dynamical and statistical features in high-dimensional biological data and provides a powerful minimal modeling philosophy for biology.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_03765
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Randomness with constraints: constructing minimal models for high-dimensional biology
Nemenman, Ilya
Mehta, Pankaj
Biological Physics
Quantitative Methods
Biologists and physicists have a rich tradition of modeling living systems with simple models composed of a few interacting components. Despite the remarkable success of this approach, it remains unclear how to use such finely tuned models to study complex biological systems composed of numerous heterogeneous, interacting components. One possible strategy for taming this biological complexity is to embrace the idea that many biological behaviors we observe are ``typical'' and can be modeled using random systems that respect biologically-motivated constraints. Here, we review recent works showing how this approach can be used to make close connection with experiments in biological systems ranging from neuroscience to ecology and evolution and beyond. Collectively, these works suggest that the ``random-with-constraints'' paradigm represents a promising new modeling strategy for capturing experimentally observed dynamical and statistical features in high-dimensional biological data and provides a powerful minimal modeling philosophy for biology.
title Randomness with constraints: constructing minimal models for high-dimensional biology
topic Biological Physics
Quantitative Methods
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.03765