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Judith,
If adequate number of people show interest in the area of
Immune System, you may include me into the list. I do not know how much I
can contribute into the research you have in mind, but the paper I am
presently working is on the food connection of diseases and
is primarily dealing with the Immunity-related diseases. My understanding
is that the immune system is the host of an incredible number of disorders. A
passage from my draft is below:
"Auto-immune diseases are usually chronic and cause slow,
progressive damage to organs and tissues. These may be organ specific or
multi-system diseases involving variety of body systems and producing complex
pattern of symptoms and signs. Organ-specific disorders may involve thyroid,
adrenaline gland, spleen, pancreas, stomach, liver, kidney, nerves and muscles,
skin, hair, ovaries, reproduction organs etc. Among possible triggers, certain
infections, particularly viruses, vaccinations and environmental factors can
cause subtle changes in lymphocyte function that lead to a breakdown in
self-recognition by the immune system. In normal circumstances, the immune
system is a protective shield and is able to distinguish clearly between ?self?
and ?non-self?. For reasons not yet clearly understood, immune system?s safety
mechanisms sometimes breakdown, resulting in an auto-immune disease. Thus, the
protection we enjoy from the immune system carries a cost. The following are
important conditions caused by immune system activity:
Heart- alveloitis and asthma; Digestive system-
Gastrointestinal and liver-coelic disease, ulcerative colitis and some form of
hepatitis; Skin- contact dermatitis, pemphigus, pemphigoid and dermatitis
herpetiforms; Endocrine- Addison?s disease, thyroiditis and Type I ?insulin
dependent (early onset) diabetes mellitus; Ear, nose and throat-
hay fever, otitis media (glue ear); Eye- uveiris, allergic
conjunctivitis and keratoconjunctivitis sicca; Children diseases-
atopic eczema, milk allergy, juvenile chronic arthtitis and Henoch-Schonlein
purpura; Blood- pernicious anamemia, autoimmune hoemolytic anaemia and
blood transfusion reactions; Reproductive- rhesus disease of newborn and
infertility; Kidney- glomerulonephritis; Joints-
rheumatoid arthritis, SLE and dermatomyositis; Nerves- multiple sclerosis,
myasthenia gravis, polyneuritis, polymyositis, post-vaccination/post-infection,
eucephalitis; Infections- immune activity is responsible for a
variety of syndromes associated with tuberculosis, malaria, Chagas? disease and
leprosy; General- anaphylaxis, graft rejection and serum
sickness."
Good luck,
Ayten
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, April 05, 2004 5:31
PM
Subject: The Rosennean Modelling
project
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
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