Danny Petrasek

MESOPHYSIOLOGY

A poorly represented area of physiological research is that which focuses on bridging molecular biology and cell biology to the macroscopic organismic physiology. The importance of this idea is summarized by the question: Given the complete details of the molecular biology of a single isolated cell, can we then predict the behavior of a connected group of cells? It seems that the answer to this question is proving to be no! The nature of the intermediate mechanisms that relate the micro physiology to the macro defines the mesophysiology. This "mesophysiology" is vital to those of us who wish to exploit the fruits of the molecular biological results in order to understand and treat human pathology. Our paper below is an example of what we consider to be a mesophysiological mechanism.

XS

XS is a computational tool to simulate cell networks in endocrine glands. In particular we have focussed on developing a set of heirarchical models to simulate the dynamic response of the parathyroid gland to serum calcium ion levels.
We developed a novel approach to simulate the entire gland as well as networks of cells by employing a Cartesian based mesh approach combined with a level-set technique to handle complex geometries.

AJP

AJP The image that is displayed here is our computational representation of a neoplasm in the Parathyroid gland inhibiting the diffusive transport of calcium. The blue color represents a low calcium concentration. A preprint of our AJP article appears below.