Mechanism-based Clustering of Genome-wide RNA Levels: Roles of Transcription and Transcript-Degradation Rates - Clustering Challenges in Biological Network - page 251

by glucose-galactose shift in this microorganism, which may be extended to other
cellular systems for similar determinations. Since these mRNA level changes re-
flect the dynamic metabolic states of cells ( i.e. , cell states) supported by dissipa-
tion of free energy, they qualify as examples of what was referred to as intracel-
lular dissipative structures ( IDSs ), an example of the application of Prigogine's
dissipative structure concept to molecular cell biology [3, 14, 17]. It was postu-
lated that IDSs serve as the immediate driving forces for all cell functions and
reflect the functional states of the cell. If this interpretation turns out to be correct
upon further investigations, the DNA array technique, due to its ability to measure
D/T ratios as demonstrated here, may prove to be an invaluable experimental
tool to characterize and investigate IDSs and their biological functions, leading to
numerous applications in basic cell biology, biotechnology, and medicine, includ-
ing developments of diagnostic procedures to recognize cancer cells in their early
developmental stages and testing drug candidates for their ability to reverse such
pathological cell states.

Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation
under Grant No. 0546574. The first author thanks R. Miura and S. Dhar of NJIT
for their valuable contributions in the early phase of the research program de-
scribed here.

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