In article <5m90dl$m68 at mserv1.dl.ac.uk>, Sergei Aksenov
<saks at nf.jinr.ru> writes
>Hello,
>>I am new to this group but the question put by Mr Brand made me share with
>you the things we do here at the Dept. of Radiobiology. We are modelling
>the SOS regulatory network in E. coli: there's one common repressor of a
snip
>>Now, the question is how can MCA be applied to such a system? I am ashamed
Before you apply MCA to a particular problem you must ask yourself why
you want to apply such an approach and most importantly what are the
specific questions you wish to answer. When you have decided on the
questions you can then try and recast them in terms of MCA. If this
route is not followed one can fall in to the trap of control coefficient
collectingitis and we end up no more enlightened than the cloners. My
personal view (and I'm sure others too) is that MCA should be used to
help you understand why the system behaves in the way it does. MCA
together with modelling is a powerful tool for this task but by no means
the final answer to all your problems. I am sure there await even
grander descriptions and methods that will allow people to understand
cellular systems. Someone was refering to systems containing over a 100
or even 100s of variables, understanding these systems might be a bit
too much for existing methods, on the other hand perhaps one doesn't
need 100s of variables to describe some behaviour which could be
summarised in just a few variables.
>to say that I know little of MCA but I feel it'll be useful here with this
>particular problem since there are some kinetic data + pathways are known
>in detail. Simulation is okay but when one wishes to go a little further
>in investigation he needs more elaborative approach.
Definitely, I agree.
>--
>Sergei Aksenov
>Ph.D. student
>Dept. of Radiobiology, JINR
>141980 Dubna, Moscow reg., Russia
>Herbert
--
Herbert M Sauro
email: HSauro at fssc.demon.co.uk
Telephone: 01974 282428
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