A multiplicity of statistical models for modeling the degeneracy of living communicating holons

¹ IMT Atlantique, Lab-STICC, Université de Bretagne Loire, 29238 Brest, France
² Sorbonne Université, INSERM, UMRS 959, Immunology-Immunopathology-Immunotherapy (i3), Paris, France
³ Sorbonne Université, Institut de la Transition Environnementale, Paris, France

^* e-mail: dominique.pastor@imt-atlantique.fr
^** e-mail: erwan.beurier@gmail.com
^*** e-mail: veronique.thomas-vaslin@sorbonne-universite.fr

Published online: 28 April 2022

Abstract

Communicating living systems detect and process a multiplicity of events with degeneracy, to continuously cope with environmental aleatoric incertitude. The concept of holon, communicating at various scales of living organizations, is hereafter formalized through dynamical systems driven by the multiplicity of statistical models. Then, the stimulus-response of elementary biological holons can be modeled by memoryless Boolean automata with different signal processing methods, in presence of noise and stochastic interference. Detection of a specified signal, to update the automaton state, can be performed via multiple families of update functions, with differentiated balances between sensitivity and specificity in presence of interference: (i) Neyman-Pearson update functions provide the best possible sensitivity to detect the signal of interest in absence of interference, but cannot guarantee a desired specificity; (ii) by detecting large amplitudes of any signal in noise, update functions based on Random Distortion Testing yield a suboptimal sensitivity to detect the signal in noise, but guarantee a wanted specificity even in presence of interference. Thus, statistical inference theories offer functional and structural redundancy and open prospects to model fractal-like holarchies, via networks of communicating degenerated automata, to feature properties of the immune system.