On Monday 1 April at 19h in the Casa de la Ciencia del CSIC (C/ Batllia 1, València) a round table will take place on the occasion of the publication of the book "Viruses as complex adaptive Systems" (Princeton University Press, 2019) by Ricard Solé and Santiago F. Elena.
Many viruses are harmful parasites that threaten us, but their crucial role in the evolution of life and the functioning of ecosystems cannot be denied. The emergence of new pathogenic viruses is one of the manifestations of its extraordinary adaptive capacity. Mathematical models help to understand viruses as complex systems in evolution and to draw analogies with the evolution of other replicative systems such as computer viruses, cancer or language. Ricard Solé and Santiago Elena's book deals with the complexity of apparently simple biological systems, such as viruses, from this theoretical point of view that connects biology and mathematics. The authors will present this approach in a popular way in a debate aimed at the general public that will be moderated by Juli Peretó.
Ricard Solé is an ICREA research professor at the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva, a joint centre CSIC-Universitat Pompeu Fabra, and Santiago F. Elena is a CSIC research professor at the Institut de Biologia Integrativa de Sistemes I2SysBio, a joint centre CSIC-Universitat de València. Both are associate professors at the Santa Fe Institute in whose series of monographs on complexity published by Princeton University Press has just published the book of which they are the authors. On the other hand, Juli Peretó is professor of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Valencia and vice-director of I2SysBio.
