|
I've been cooking some of these ideas over the weekend. I'm going
to "think out loud" as it were and see what comes together on the ideas raised
so far towards creating new medical models based on Robert Rosen's Complexity
Theory approach:
So far, the focus has been narrowed down to the area of medicine
and I'd like to continue in this direction (particularly as no one else has
voiced any objections or counter-suggestions). Here are my potential areas to
focus our modeling exercise on:
One of my curiosities has been mitochondria and the role they play
in genetics of human beings and in metabolism. I have done quite a bit of
research on this subject and the subject is getting bigger all the
time. Mitochondrial DNA has been implicated in scores of metabolic and genetic
diseases, and is jointly implicated in such familiar diseases as Alzheimer's,
Parkinson's, and Type 1 Diabetes, along with several types of cancers... stuff I
would never have thought could be associated with mitochondrial DNA. The subject
also plays a role in cloning, because the host egg's mitochondria stay intact
when a new nucleus is inserted, Thus Dolly the sheep had "a stranger's"
mitochondria. What role did that fact play in the success/failure of the
project? Cells have a unique version of an internal immune system that can
attack mitochondria, and I am very curious about what kinds of research have
been done on mitochondrial gene therapy and whether transplanting foreign
mitochondria can induce the cell's immune system to attack or if that is only a
property of the larger immune system. The NIH has begun a huge funding effort to
support research in this area, so it sounds to me as though my curiosity has
pretty good timing. Anyone on the list want to continue down this
road?
Another area of interest which is apparently related is that of
immune system. My father had some theories on the nature of the immune system
which I would like to pursue further. His ideas are in the direction of
understanding autoimmune diseases, in particular. I'm willing to share his
theories with the list as long as I can protect the copyright issue (I can't
"patent" a theory, apparently, but if we generate something that is patentable,
I want to make sure that my father's name is included, etc). This particular
subject might have to be conducted "off-list" amongst interested subscribers if
the legalities specify that by posting these theories, I give up copyright of
them. (Tim, do you know anything about this issue?).
A third area that my father had a lot of ideas in was embryology
and differentiation of cells, etc. So I would be interested in pursuing research
into that area with an eye towards seeing what kind of modeling protocols we can
generate using Rosennean approaches.
A final one is apropos the recent discussions on Anticipation. I
want to delve deeper into what this "internal predictive model" consists of and
how it is encoded into an organism. I see that the implications of this have a
lot to say about everything from aging to ecosystem management, etc.
Anticipation is one of the basic concepts connected to complexity at the
dimension of living organisms, so I don't see how ecologists can hope to model
ecosystem behavior in the light of climate change, etc, without a better
understanding of this feature of organisms.
Any ideas from the group? Preferences? Suggestions?
Judith
|