At the end of March Vivent was pleased to present two short talks at the GDR-PhyP workshop on the transduction and propagation of plant signals which was held at CNSR facility in Gif-sur-Yvette and attended by about 50 researchers from over 28 institutes.

The first talk described Vivent’s collaboration with a Swiss team of researchers from a range of institutes to apply machine learning to the analysis of electrical signals recorded from plants, in response to a range of stressors and over different stages of plant development, nursery, vegetative and generative. This is a clear example of how information scientists can utilise new approaches, in our case data mining classification algorithms to better understand biological systems.

The second talk presented by Vivent used a theoretical approach to predict determinant growth in plants based on information flows (signal communication). This talk elicited some strong responses from the audience but clearly caused many of the biologists to think differently about plants as biological systems. This theoretical approach is linked to Vivent DARPA funded RadioBio research project.

Biologists and physicists working together is also a hot topic in academic research right now and a simple search will yield many papers and articles on the subject. We think these collaborations will lead to strong advancements in understanding biological systems and encourage physicists and information scientists to develop a wide range of new tools and techniques for analysing the complexity inherent in the living world. Vivent is delighted to be catalysing this process.