| Literature DB >> 24432157 |
Abstract
Context-dependent nature of biological phenomena is well documented in every branch of biology. While there have been few previous attempts to (implicitly) model various (particular) facets of biological context-dependence, a formal and general mathematical construct to model the wide spectrum of context-dependence, eludes the students of biology. Such an objective model, from both 'bottom-up' as well as 'top-down' perspective, is proposed here to serve as the template to describe the various kinds of context-dependence that we encounter in different branches of biology. Interactions between biological contexts was found to be transitive but non-commutative. It is found that a hierarchical nature of dependence among the biological contexts models the emergent biological properties efficiently. Reasons for these findings are provided in a general model to describe biological reality. Scheme to algorithmically implement the hierarchic structure of organization of biological contexts was proposed with a construct named 'Context tree'. A 'Context tree' based analysis of context interactions among biophysical factors influencing protein structure was performed.Keywords: Biological contexts; Context tree; Emergence; Hierarchical organization; Mathematical model; Protein structure; Structural dependencies; Thread-mesh model
Year: 2013 PMID: 24432157 PMCID: PMC3824819 DOI: 10.1007/s11693-013-9122-6
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Syst Synth Biol ISSN: 1872-5325