Fisher M J, Malcolm G, Paton R C
School of Biological Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK.
Biosystems. 2000 Feb;55(1-3):83-92. doi: 10.1016/s0303-2647(99)00086-6.
Classical models of intracellular signalling describe how small changes in a cell's external environment can bring about major changes in cellular activity. Recent findings from experimental biology indicate that many intracellular signalling systems show a high level of spatial organisation. This permits the modification, by protein kinase or protein phosphatase action, of specific subsets of intracellular proteins - an attribute that is not addressed in classical signalling models. Here we use ideas and concepts from computer science to describe the information processing nature of intracellular signalling pathways and the impact of spatial heterogeneity of their components (e.g. protein kinases and protein phosphatases) on signalling activity. We argue that it is useful to view the signalling ecology as a vast parallel distributed processing network of agents operating in heterogeneous microenvironments, and we conclude with an overview of the mathematical and semantic methodologies that might help clarify this analogy between biological and computational systems.
细胞内信号传导的经典模型描述了细胞外部环境中的微小变化如何引发细胞活动的重大改变。实验生物学的最新研究结果表明，许多细胞内信号系统呈现出高度的空间组织性。这使得通过蛋白激酶或蛋白磷酸酶的作用对细胞内特定蛋白质子集进行修饰成为可能——这一特性在经典信号模型中并未涉及。在此，我们运用计算机科学的思想和概念来描述细胞内信号通路的信息处理本质，以及其组成成分（如蛋白激酶和蛋白磷酸酶）的空间异质性对信号传导活性的影响。我们认为，将信号生态视为在异质微环境中运行的大量并行分布式处理智能体网络是很有用的，并且我们以对数学和语义方法的概述作为总结，这些方法可能有助于阐明生物系统与计算系统之间的这种类比关系。
