Introduction to the Special Section on Network Science in Biological and Bio-Inspired Systems

The papers in this special section examine network science in biological and bio-inspired systems. Networks exist widely in biological systems, including neuronal networks, protein-protein interaction networks, metabolic networks, gene regulatory networks, food web, microbiome, and local interactions in flocks. These biological systems have inspired several intelligent algorithms such as genetic algorithms, artificial neural networks, particle swarm optimization, population protocol, to name a few. As biological and bio-inspired systems are distributed and usually operate without central control, network science is an elegant and powerful framework to investigate their structure and functions. Indeed, network biology and networked bio-inspired systems have recently attracted significant attentions and become a promising interdisciplinary field. The papers in this section focus on the structure and functions of biological and bio-inspired networks.