User:J. C. Martinez-Garcia/Notebook/HMS Activities/2008/10/07

The David's conference

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Desensitization The talk given by David receive a strong critic by Tim Mitchinson -Director of Mitchinson Lab at the Systems Biology Department- (http://mitchison.med.harvard.edu/people/peopleinfo.html?ID=13). The main critic concerned the term bistability, in particular when used by David to describe the hysteretical phenomenon observed in the AKT signaling pathway. Mitchinson considered that the hysteresis is due to a desensitization phenomenon, and that such a behavior is very well known in biology. He then express a general critic against the systems biology approach, since he consider that systems biology rename terms and pretend that they are new ones. I think that he is right at certain level, but concerning the desensitization I have no knowledge on the question, so it would be better to learn something about it. Maybe I can directly question Mitchinson of somebody working in his team. Concerning the results, i still consider that the interpretation of the phenomenon in terms ob friction desserves to be told. The Kappa question I spoke some minutes with Walter yesterday night, and it make me remember that I must work with the kappa factory systems. So, I will take some time every day to work in this domain. The course on networks I asked Cesar Hidalgo to help me to put in word my ideas about networks and innovation. When speaking with him yesterday I though that maybe clustering is a mechanism of the networks to avoid extinction of efficiency (i.e., systems evolves in clusters to increase robustness, each cluster can be slightly different from the other one, just protecting in that way what must survive). I will continue studying the question today.