Cancer and Chaos and the Complex Network Model of a Multicellular Organism

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Currently, knowledge on chaos has developed rapidly, and the link between cancer and “genomic chaos” seems obvious. Hopes for a deeper understanding of cancer, allowing cancer modeling, therefore relate to the meaning of the term “chaos”. It has many meanings, however. Chaos theory and medicine are conceptually quite distant, requiring the comparison and agreement of terms. This article was written by three authors whose fields cover both medical problems and complex dynamic networks suitable for modeling cancer, including chaotic phenomena. The article provides, first of all, a coherent, common interpretative basis linking chaos with modeling tools, which should significantly facilitate teams of specialists from various fields to undertake specific work on simulating cancer-related phenomena. ABSTRACT: In the search of theoretical models describing cancer, one of promising directions is chaos. It is connected to ideas of “genome chaos” and “life on the edge of chaos”, but they profoundly differ in the meaning of the term “chaos”. To build any coherent models, notions used by both ideas should be firstly brought closer. The hypothesis “life on the edge of chaos” using deterministic chaos has been radically deepened developed in recent years by the discovery of half-chaos. This new view requires a deeper interpretation within the range of the cell and the organism. It has impacts on understanding “chaos” in the term “genome chaos”. This study intends to present such an interpretation on the basis of which such searches will be easier and closer to intuition. We interpret genome chaos as deterministic chaos in a large module of half-chaotic network modeling the cell. We observed such chaotic modules in simulations of evolution controlled by weaker variant of natural selection. We also discuss differences between free and somatic cells in modeling their disturbance using half-chaotic networks.