What is Quantitative Biology and Why Does it Matter? As explained by Pradipta Ghosh

Our group is fascinated with molecules inside the cell popularly referred to as switches, because they control the flow of information inside a cell and between the cell and its external environment. A long-held belief was that one class of switch solely senses the outside environment, such as lower oxygen availability, while another class of switch solely coordinates communication within the cell, such as telling the genes to produce different proteins. Finding out whether the two types of switches interact has been elusive.

This is because cells are tiny, and the switches even tinier! There are many compelling mysteries that we biologists are still chipping away at, aided by technological advances with each passing decade.

Through these advances, we have recently discovered a circuit that combines both types of switches and allows the cell to sense its environment and mount a fitting response to it. To investigate how this circuit works in commanding a cells behavior, we now need to approach it as engineers, i.e., by building it as an electrical circuit in a virtual cell model.

To do so, we must use quantitative biology to gather measurements from the real world and feed those measurements to inform the model. Such a model, if built right, can have predictive power to ask questions that have never been possible before, and further our insights into how cells behave as intelligent machines that adapt to changing environments.

The scientists who build the modelsmathematicians, computational biologists, systems engineersneed numbers. At what second does the switch turn on? For how long? To answer their questions, we need assays that get precise measurements of whats happening in the cells interior. Thats the type of technology well have at the Agilent Center of Excellence for Cellular Intelligence.

Once the model is built, it becomes a virtual cell that we can tinker with, visualizing its behavior if we lower the oxygen supply or put it into chemotherapy. In this way, predictive models allow us to create an intervention and ask how it changes the cells behavior. If, for instance, I add a drug that will take out one of the switches, can I prevent a tumor cell from metastasizing?

This is how quantitative biology, advanced technology, and multidisciplinary research synergize to save peoples lives.

Link:

Measuring the Intelligence of a Cell - University of California San Diego