Frank's Emails	BIO - Some background info
		Re: BIO - Some background info
Hi John, I promised to write something about the biological background of my model I will give an overview here and put more information on this subject at the web. I intent to use the web as a place to put all kind of information and ideas, since you already put the email messages on the web. I've studied biology and specialised in microbiology (more specific microbial physiology and environmental microbiology). A large part of microbial physiology deals with metabolic pathways. Metabolism is a term used for all chemical transformations taking place in a cell. As an example of a metabolic pathway I'll put information on the citric acid cycle on the web. It might be interesting to note that metabolic pathways are often draw as a map. Since the maps are drawn by biochemicists the often lay the emphasis on the chemicals that are chaged instead of the enzymes (so they can draw the chemical structure in the map :), it would be quite difficult to draw enzymes since they are very complex). So a metabolic pathway is a collection of 'linked chemical reactions': chemical 1 -> chemical 2 -> chemical 3 Those reactions are catalysed by enzymes. Enzymes are one or more polypetides and a polypetide is 'a chain of amino acids'. All polypetides are made using a set of 20 amino acids. The sequence of the polypetides is coded in the DNA using 4 different 'chemicals'. One gene = One polypeptide. This is in short the biological system I based my ideas on. The metaphor: Data are the chemicals and hups are the enzymes coded by maps (DNA) using the basic operator hups (amino acids). a collection of hups is a set of chemical reactions is a cell. A specialised cell is a neuron. a group of cells forms an organ (for example a 'database program'). A group of organs forms an organism (a computer) a group of organisms forms a ecosystem (the internet or a intranet). Or an organ is a computer and a set of computers forms an organism. Just names, I don't care how they are called as long as I can use my computer this way. Great reaction of Tim Murphy, it is exactly as I would like to develop this (I mentioned this before to you didn't I?) Could we setup a 'chemical reaction' ? :) Regards, Frank ____________________________________________________________ Drs. F.P. Schuurmans CYBER PUBLISHERS frank@bio.vu.nl Amsterdam, The Netherlands