InSilico'SimulationofBiologicalProcesses

Overrecentdecadesvastamountsofbiologicaldatahavebeenaccumulated.However,itisbecomingincreasinglydifficulttoapplytraditionaltheoreticalmethodstotheformulationofcoherentpicturesofcellandorganfunctionbecauseitisnolongerpossibleforahumantheoristtointegratealloftheavailableinformation.Instead,computertechnologiesmustnowbeusedtoperformthisintegration.Thisbookbringstogethercontributionsfrommanydifferentfieldstosummarizethecurrentstatusofcomputer-assistedmodellingofbiologicalprocesses.Theinitialchaptersdealwithfundamentaldevelopmentsinhardware,softwareandmathematicsthatunderliecurrentapproachestobiologicalmodelling.Next,differentapproachestocollatingdataongenestructureandfunctionarepresented.Thesedatabasesformavitalresourceforanyinvestigatortryingtoconstructanintegratedpictureofparticularbiologicalsystems.Cellsignallingsystemsformaparticularlycomplicatedaspectofallcellularfunctionandareimportantbothintheunderstandingofbasiccellularprocessesandinselectingtargetsfordrugs.Recentapproachestointegratingdataoncellsignallingintocomputermodelsarecovered.Furtherchaptersbuildontheseapproachestoshowhowcomputerizedmodelsofintactcellscanbedeveloped.Finally,approachestothecomputermodellingofwholeorganssuchastheheartarepresented.Theroleofcomputermodellingindrugdesignisthesubjectofthefinalchapterandisalsotouchedonthroughoutthediscussions.