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Relation to Mathematical Modeling
The ICBP initiative refers a lot to Mathematical Modeling. Although it is a very living concept for mathematicians, this cannot be said for biologists. The latter will probably wonder what Mathematical Modeling is and how this approach should concern them or not.
“Mathematical Modeling” usually scares because of the “mathematics” sound to it. But believe it or not, biologists (or experimentalists) do modeling all the time. They just are not usually taking the extra mile to “convert” it to mathematical equations. And here we are going to prove it.
Let’s say you, a biologist, are working on cell proliferation
following a treatment. You have your tissue culture dish that you follow
regularly, counting each time the number of cells. And your
observations are rendered in the blue table.
You know that you started with 12 cells. Now let’s call the number of cells you started with n0 and the time you count your cells t. You could rewrite your table as what is displayed in the green table.
Now, if you were to use the time in the expression of the number of cells, you’ll have the orange table.
So, in your system, cells react by following the rule in the red box.
This example illustrates how biologists use on a daily basis mathematics to render their results or state hypotheses. Integrative cancer biology follows the same concept with "harder" mathematics: explain, organize, simulate, and rule hypotheses from cancer research.
section maintained by J.Jourquin
