Discovering Genetic Regulatory Network Models in Pisum sativum

Living organisms consist of interacting objects such as organs, cells, and genes. Therefore, they can be considered complex systems and we have applied a complex systems simulation methodology to a living organism, focussing on the relationship between interacting genes and phenotype. Different levels can be distinguished in a complex system, from the level with the most fine-grained entities, through intermediate levels of composite entities, to the whole system. Properties and interactions of entities at a lower or microlevel give rise to properties and behaviour of more course-grained entities at a higher or macro-level, but the latter are not obviously predictable from the former. This phenomenon of macro-level properties and behaviour arising out of micro-level properties and behaviour, without being apparent from them, is known as emergence, a fundamental property of complex systems.