Timing in Biological Systems

Abstract

Nervous systems and human-designed circuits have similar objectives of performing useful computation, but use very different computational substrates. In both cases, the timing of computations within the system is critically important to the system’s correct functioning. Timing in human-designed digital systems has been the subject of research for decades and is reasonably well understood, though not yet perfected. Conversely, the operation of biological computation has been shaped by evolution as opposed to humans, and is not yet well understood. Here we discuss some of the differences in architecture and timing between the two methods. From this we look at what existing timing tools can be used, what new features are perhaps required, and what new tools may perhaps need to be invented, in order to analyze (and eventually design) the timing of biological systems.

Biography

Louis Scheffer received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Caltech in 1974 and 1975, and a Ph.D. from Stanford in 1984. He worked at Hewlett Packard from 1975 to 1981 as a chip designer and CAD tool developer. In 1981, he joined Valid Logic Systems, where he did hardware design, developed a schematic editor, and built an IC layout, routing, and verification system. In 1991, Valid merged with Cadence, and Lou then worked on place and route, floorplanning systems, and signal integrity issues until 2008.

In 2008, Lou switched fields to neurobiology at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, using electron microscope images to reconstruct the circuits of small animals such as fruit flies. He, in collaboration with many colleagues, then tries to understand and interpret the operation of these circuits, often using techniques related to those he used in electrical engineering.