Eric J. Deeds Center for Bioinformatics and Department of Molecular Biosciences University of Kansas Title: The dynamics of assembly in complex biological networks Abstract: Over the past decade it has become increasingly clear that the protein interactions that underly a variety of cellular processes, from transcription and translation to signal transduction, form highly interconnected networks. These networks are generally combinatorially complex, in the sense that they can generate astronomical numbers of possible molecular species. I will discuss our efforts to employ rule- and agent-based simulation techniques to study the dynamics of assembly in these types of biological networks. We have found that combinatorial complexity has far-reaching consequences for how we conceptualize the physical nature and evolutionary plasticity of protein complexes within cells.