Introduction: self-organization as an actual theme.

Self-organization is a widely observed phenomenon in nature and in life. Scientists from many disciplines are now searching for explanatory and regulatory mechanisms of self-organization and its role and location in dynamic complex systems. The role of self-organization is important, and recent attempts to reveal the creative and innovative mechanisms by using computers and experiments are promising. Self-organization is an enigma it is time to solve. This issue is a special report on some of the exciting research efforts now being done to increase our knowledge of self-organization in biological systems in particular.