Connectomic analysis of multi-scale cellular networks

Complex network analysis is a fascinating research topic with incredibly diverse applications: social networks, transportation, logistics, telecommunication and computing infrastructures, etc. It is also a cornerstone of neuroscience, where biologists seek to understand the relationships between measured functions and brain organization. At the most fundamental level, this involves understanding how the topology/connectivity of the neural network determines functions at larger scales and vice versa. Few people know that there are as many cells in the human skeleton as there are in the brain, and that in both cases the cells are highly interconnected. The biological role of this network and the impact of topology are still very poorly understood and it is therefore tempting to apply similar ideas developed in the general framework of complex network analysis to bones. Such approaches could have a strong impact on the biomedical community.