Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 4.4: Hierarchy of scales and environments, the corresponding bio-
logical mechanisms, and our proposed modeling approach. Information flows
from the microscopic biochemical processes to the cell-level phenomenology.
different levels of organization thus continuously give feedback and influence
each other, as depicted in Figure 4.4.
The application of the new approach to biological cells is of particular in-
terest. In this context, each component of the internal state vector s can rep-
resent the spatiotemporal variation of the concentration of intracellular ions
and molecules (nutrients, nucleic acids, proteins, growth factors, . . . ), whose
presence and quantity strictly regulate the cell activity and its biological prop-
erties. In particular, for any component s
;l
of s
, given a well-characterized
(although simplified) biochemical pathway
A + B
C + D:::
E + F
s
;l
;
(4.11)
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