Mayorga Luis S, Verma Meghna, Hontecillas Raquel, Hoops Stefan, Bassaganya-Riera Josep
IHEM (Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, CONICET), Facultad de Ciencias Médicas, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Mendoza, Argentina.
Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory, Biocomplexity Institute, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA.
Cell Logist. 2017 Nov 29;7(4):e1392401. doi: 10.1080/21592799.2017.1392401. eCollection 2017.
Cell biology is increasingly evolving to become a more formal and quantitative science. The field of intracellular transport is no exception. However, it is extremely challenging to formulate mathematical and computational models for processes that involve dynamic structures that continuously change their shape, position and composition, leading to information transfer and functional outcomes. The two major strategies employed to represent intracellular trafficking are based on "ordinary differential equations" and "agent-" based modeling. Both approaches have advantages and drawbacks. Combinations of both modeling strategies have promising characteristics to generate meaningful simulations for intracellular transport and allow the formulation of new hypotheses and provide new insights. In the near future, cell biologists will encounter and hopefully overcome the challenge of translating descriptive cartoon representations of biological systems into mathematical network models.
细胞生物学正日益发展成为一门更加形式化和定量的科学。细胞内运输领域也不例外。然而，为涉及动态结构（其形状、位置和组成不断变化，从而导致信息传递和功能结果）的过程制定数学和计算模型极具挑战性。用于表示细胞内运输的两种主要策略基于“常微分方程”和“基于主体”的建模。这两种方法都有优缺点。两种建模策略的结合具有产生有意义的细胞内运输模拟、提出新假设并提供新见解的良好特性。在不久的将来，细胞生物学家将面临并有望克服将生物系统的描述性卡通表示转化为数学网络模型这一挑战。
