Contributions
The session was opened by the meeting organizer Fordyce Davidson, who gave an overview of the main challenges
faced in attempting to link the increasing quantity and quality of genetic and sub-cellular experimental data to large-scale
morphology and function. He detailed some of his group’s ongoing work, which ranges from the bio-mechanics of hyphal
growth and thigmotropism (contact sensing) to qualitative properties of colony growth. He finished by proposing that a
multi-scale, quantitative (mathematical modelling) approach is ideal for and perhaps necessary to the efficient translation
of molecular genetics to a deeper understanding of the organism as a whole and its role in the host environment
(Davidson 2007, 2010, Rosling et al. 2009).