[From Bruce Abbott (2001.08.15.0840 EST)]
The lead article of month's issue of Scientific American (August 2001),
entitled "Cybercells: Simulating Life for Drug Discovery," may be of
interest to CSGnetters. The article documents recent attempts to simulate
biochemical reactions taking place inside individual cells, including those
reactions involved in gene expression. According to the article, most
biologists still use computers mainly for data storage, but "the past few
years have seen a growing movement among mathematically minded biologists to
challenge the central dogma [of current theories] as simplistic and to use
computer simulations to search for a more powerful theory." This sea-change
is described as a "grand-scale Kuhnian revolution in biology."
So what have been the results thus far? An example is Tomita's "E-Cell"
model, which is a virtual cell of 127 genes. "But Tomita was surprised when
he changed by several orders of magnitude the strength at which various
genes in the model were expressed: the E-Cell's behavior hardly budged at all."
There's much more to the article, but I just want to whet your appetite. I
wonder what process could keep the cell's "behavior" so stable against such
large disturbances? Hmmm, could it be . . . . . control?
Bruce A.