SIAM Conference on the Life Sciences in Charlotte

This week I have been attending the SIAM Conference on the Life Sciences in Charlotte. Here I want to mention some highlights from my personal point of view. First I will mention some of the plenary talks. John Rinzel talked about mathematical modelling of certain perceptual phenomena. We are all familiar with the face-vase picture which switches repeatedly between two forms. I had never considered the question of trying to predict how often the picture switches. Rinzel presented models for this and for other related auditory phenomena which he demonstrated in the lecture. I find it remarkable that such apparently subjective phenomena can be brought into such close connection with precise mathematical models. Kristin Swanson talked about her work on modelling the brain cancer known as glioma and its various deadly forms. I had heard her talk on the same theme at the meeting of the Society for Mathematical Biology in Dundee in 2003. Of course there has been a lot of progress since then. This was long before I started this blog but if the blog had existed I would certainly have written about the topic. I will not try to resurrect the old stories from that distant epoch. Instead I will just say that Kristin is heavily involved in using computer simulations to optimize the treatment (surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy) of individual patients. One of the main points in her talk this week is that it seems to be possible to divide patients into two broad categories (with nodular or diffuse growth of the tumour) and that this alone may have important implications for therapeutic decisions. Oliver Jensen talked about a multiscale model for predicting plant growth, for instance the way in which a root manages to sense gravity and move downwards. This involves some very sophisticated continuum mechanics which the speaker illustrated by everyday examples in a very effective and sometimes humorous way. The talk was both impressive and entertaining. Norman Mazer talked about the different kinds of cholesterol (LDL, HDL etc.). According to what he said lowering LDL levels is an effective means for avoiding risks of cardiovascular illness but the alternative strategy of raising HDL levels has not been successful. He explained how mathematical modelling can throw light on this phenomenon. My understanding is that the link between high HDL level and lower cardiovascular risks is a correlation and not a sign of a causal influence of HDL level on risk factors. The last talk was by James Collins, a pioneer of synthetic biology. The talk was full of good material, both mathematical and non-mathematical. Maybe I should invest some time into learning about that field.

There was one very interesting subject which was not the subject of a talk at the conference (at least not of one I heard – it was briefly referred to in the talk of Collins mentioned above) but was a subject of conversation. It is a paper called ‘Paradoxical Results in Perturbation-Based Signaling Network Reconstruction’ by Sudhakaran Prabakaran, Jeremy Gunawardena and Eduardo Sontag which appeared in Biophys. J. 106, 2720. It suggests that the ways in which biologists deduce the influence of substances on each other on the basis of experiments are quite problematic. The mathematical content of the paper is rather elementary but its consequences for the way in which theoretical ideas are applied in biology may be considerable. The system studied in the paper is an in vitro reconstruction of part of the MAP kinase cascade and so not so far from some of my research.

Among the parallel sessions those which were most relevant for me were one entitled ‘Algebra in the Life Sciences’ and organized by Elisenda Feliu, Nicolette Meshkat and Carsten Wiuf and one called ‘Developments in the Mathematics of Biochemical Reaction Networks’ organized by Casian Pantea and Maya Mincheva. My talk was in the second of these. These sessions were very valuable for me since they allowed me to meet a considerable number of people working in areas close to my own research interests, including several whose papers were well known to me but whom I had never met. I think that this will bring me to a new level in my work in mathematical biology due to the various interactions which took place. I will not discuss the contents of individual talks here. It is rather the case that what I learned form them will flow into my research effort and hence indirectly influence future posts in this blog. I feel that this conference has gained me entrance into a (for me) new research community which could be the natural habitat for my future research. I am very happy about that. The whole conference was an enjoyable and stimulating experience for me. I noticed no jet lag at all but I must be suffering from a lack of sleep due to the fact that the many things going on here just did not leave me the eight hours of sleep per night I am used to.

 

 

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