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