The First International Workshop on Information Processing in Cells
and Tissues (IPCAT) was held in Liverpool
between 6th - 8th September 1995.
The purpose as advertised to the scientific community was
"to bring together a multidisciplinary group of
scientists working in the general area of modelling
cells and tissues".
In the end it attracted 85 delegates
from 19 different countries. The discipline specialists attending
included: mathematicians, biochemists, cell biologists, neuroscientists,
physiologists,computer scientists, biophysicists, immunologists,
medics and electronic engineers. This book represents
a selection from over forty papers which were presented at IPCAT 95.
The first chapter provides an introductory overview to the book which is
then divided into three general areas:
It is important to note however that because the material is interrelated in a many ways it could have been organised differently. The reader is encouraged to view the text as a whole and find many meaningful links outside of the three sections.
There is often a great deal of discussion these days about
multi-disciplinary
research and the value of exchanging ideas and methods across traditional
discipline boundaries. Indeed, it could be justifiably argued that
many of the
advances in science and engineering take place because the ideas,
methods and the tools of
thought from one discipline become re-applied in others.
Sadly, it is also
the case that many subject areas develop specialised vocabularies and
concepts and indeed may also approach more general problems in fairly
narrow subject-specific ways. As a result barriers
develop between disciplines that prevent the free flow of ideas and
the collaborations that could often bring success.
This is particularly true in biology and computing where recent
rapid developments in research create a danger that many of the
advances made do not get exploited in the other subject. As one
participant commented:
"I would say that IPCAT has opened a forum of a unique nature: both
experimentalists and theoreticians from the biosciences and computer science
badly needed to join their forces in order to make sense of the contemporary
glut of new bio-molecular-informational data. It is a timely and rewarding
enterprise."
Now is an excellent time to try to bring the two
communities together to evaluate progress, educate and inspire
each other in the expectation that significant rewards will
follow.
A central theme for IPCAT 95 was to explore the nature of biological information and the ways it is processed in cells and tissues. The workshop sought to provide a forum to report research, discuss emerging topics and gain new insights into biological and computational information processing systems. Comments from one participant reflect this view:
"I was surprised to encounter such a strong interest in models on a subcellular level. Considering the state of cellular and network models, which have seen an enormous development recently, it may be hoped that the subcellular level will equally well develop. However, this level also holds particular difficulties e.g. the limited spatial and temporal resolution of techniques that could provide data on local concentrations of reactants in vivo. Thus, both better modeling and experimental approaches to subcellular information processing are required."
The multidisciplinary and international nature
of IPCAT meant that a variety of viewpoints were exposed and discussed. One
participant commented:
"I found the conference very stimulating in many respects. Especially,
what I like are as follows.
(1) The conference covered many different topics relevant to biology.
(2) Most of the scientists who participated seem very knowledgeable in a
wide variety of topics. Experimentalists had interests in theory
and were
quite knowledgeable in theory. Theoreticians dealt with biologically
relevant problems, not just mathematically oriented problems.
I learned a lot from the talks given by the speakers and also through the
discussions during the breaks."
This view was widely shared and most participants felt that the conference was a uniquely stimulating experience. We hope to repeat the event in 1997.
One of the key motivations underlying the first IPCAT Workshop and this book was to attempt to provide a common ground for dialogue and reporting research without emphasising one particular research constituency or way of modelling or singular issue in this area. This is quite a challenging agenda when one considers the great variety of techniques and perspectives involved and the great variety of biological phenomena being studied. There are many exciting and novel avenues that are worth exploring but the understanding of biological phenomena should always be a primary aim.
The IPCAT idea did not take very long to evolve. It started about one year prior to the event when initial discussions between the editors got underway on running a workshop in this area. It soon became clear to us that such an event was timely and this was to some degree endorsed when many of the people we approached happily agreed to become members of the programme committee. However, it was still a risky business and so we are grateful to a number of sponsors (listed below) who provided a much-needed buffer should the event have been unsuccessful.
Part of the challenge of IPCAT and this book is
to re-appraise the types of models used to describe and explain
the systems of interest and explore complementary viewpoints.
Hence, some participants commented:
"After IPCAT 95 we became more conscious that there is still a lot of
work to do concerning the modelling of biological systems. This work concerns
not only the sort of models we are working with to represent and quantitate
biological systems, but to a real questioning
of the implicit built-in assumptions of our models. Many of these implicit
assumptions are contained in the experimental evidence
we choose as a source of the piece of reality we intend to model ...
IPCAT 95 provided us the following question: is information
always associated with organization? and if so, how ?"
We hope this issue will be addressed further in future IPCAT events.
It was with sadness that during the production of this book Roy Cuthbertson died. His work on calcium oscillators and positive feedback attracted international recognition and his ideas and enthusiasm contributed greatly to the workshop. As a small token of our appreciation and in recognition of his work we dedicate this book to his memory.
Our thanks to the programme review committee:
Georg Brabant - Endocrinology (Hanover)
Michael Conrad - Computer Science (Detroit)
Claus Emmeche - Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies (Copenhagen)
George Kampis - Ethology and Philosophy of Science (Budapest)
Douglas Kell - Biological Sciences (Aberystwyth)
Gareth Leng - Physiology (Edinburgh)
Pedro Marijuan - Electronics & Informatics (Zaragoza)
Koichiro Matsuno - BioEngineering (Nagaoka)
Hans-Paul Schwefel - Computer Science (Dortmund)
Idan Segev - Neurobiology (Jerusalem)
Gordon Shepherd - Neurobiology (Yale)
Rene Thomas - Molecular Biology (Brussels)
Chris Tofts - Computer Science (Manchester)
John Tucker - Computer Science (Swansea)
G Rickey Welch - Biological Sciences (New Orleans)
Gershom Zajicek - Experimental Medicine and Cancer Research (Jerusalem)
Finally, our thanks to Richard Lim of World Scientific for his interest in
IPCAT 95 and encouragement and advice during the production of this book.
The editors also acknowledge the help and support of a number of
organisations who made the first IPCAT workshop possible:
GPT, Unilever, Zeneca, SmithKline Beecham,
Merseytravel,
The University of Liverpool and The Royal Society.