Events

KLI Colloquia are invited research talks of about an hour followed by 30 min discussion. The talks are held in English, open to the public, and offered in hybrid format. 

 

Fall-Winter 2025-2026 KLI Colloquium Series

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5881861923?omn=85945744831
Meeting ID: 588 186 1923

 

25 Sept 2025 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

A Dynamic Canvas Model of Butterfly and Moth Color Patterns

Richard Gawne (Nevada State Museum)

 

14 Oct 2025 (Tues) 3-4:30 PM CET

Vienna, the Laboratory of Modernity

Richard Cockett (The Economist)

 

23 Oct 2025 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

How Darwinian is Darwinian Enough? The Case of Evolution and the Origins of Life

Ludo Schoenmakers (KLI)

 

6 Nov (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

Common Knowledge Considered as Cause and Effect of Behavioral Modernity

Ronald Planer (University of Wollongong)

 

20 Nov (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

Rates of Evolution, Time Scaling, and the Decoupling of Micro- and Macroevolution

Thomas Hansen (University of Oslo)

 

4 Dec (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

Chance, Necessity, and the Evolution of Evolvability

Cristina Villegas (KLI)

 

8 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

Embodied Rationality: Normative and Evolutionary Foundations

Enrico Petracca (KLI)

 

15 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

On Experimental Models of Developmental Plasticity and Evolutionary Novelty

Patricia Beldade (Lisbon University)

 

29 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

O Theory Where Art Thou? The Changing Role of Theory in Theoretical Biology in the 20th Century and Beyond

Jan Baedke (Ruhr University Bochum)

Event Details

Christoph Flamm
KLI Colloquia
From Graph Grammars to Evolving Reaction Networks
Christoph FLAMM (University of Vienna)
2016-04-14 16:30 - 2016-04-14 16:30
KLI
Organized by KLI

Topic description:
Computational models to explore the structure and evolution of catalyzed reaction networks (or metabolism in particular) have demanding pre-requisites. The central component of such a model requires a formalization of chemistry which is able to capture the algebraic and thermodynamic structure of chemical processes while remaining computationally tractable. During chemical transformations molecular entities can change their quantitative physico-chemical properties while atom types and mass is conserved. Furthermore, upon interaction, novel molecular species with hitherto unknown physico-chemical properties may arise. The formalism must be expressive enough to mimic the intricacy of a modern metabolic network, without restricting the possible chemistry to the known extant end results. With such a formalism in place the question how evolved reaction networks differ from abiotic ones can be approached. I will illustrate the potential of our graph grammar based chemistry formalism by presenting results (i) on the evolution of metabolism showing that all traces of the early reaction system are erased, and (ii) the density of autocatalysis in reaction networks, which turns out to be rather high for metabolism.

 

Biographical note:
Christoph Flamm​ received a master in Organic Chemistry (focus area natural product synthesis) and a doctorate in Theoretical Chemistry (focus area folding kinetics of RNA) from the University of Vienna. After an extended postdoctoral research stay at the University of Leipzig he returned to the University of Vienna and was conferred the venia docendi (Habilitation) in fall 2006. Since that time he is Associate Professor at the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Vienna. Flamm teaches Cheminformatics and Systems Biology courses. He is experienced in the development of theoretical methods for the analysis of complex (bio)chemical reaction systems and computational RNA Biology. Flamm currently focuses his research on blending computer science and chemistry concepts.