Unifying Theories in High-Dimensional Biology: Approaches, Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Across biological subdisciplines, the last decade has seen an explosion of high-dimensional datasets, including datasets for cells, species, immune systems, neurons and behaviour. At the ICTS workshop 'Unifying Theories in High-Dimensional Biophysics' we discussed whether this high dimensionality poses a challenge or opportunity for describing, understanding and predicting biological systems theoretically. We discussed methods, models and frameworks that can help with addressing empirical observations based on these high-dimensional datasets. We summarize the challenges and opportunities that emerged in discussions according to individual participants below.