Tensegrity I. Cell structure and hierarchical systems biology

Tensegrity I. Cell structure and hierarchical systems biology.

In 1993, a Commentary in this journal described how a simple mechanical model of cell structure based on tensegrity architecture can help to explain how cell shape, movement and cytoskeletal mechanics are controlled, as well as how cells sense and respond to mechanical forces (J. Cell Sci. 104, 613-627). The cellular tensegrity model can now be revisited and placed in context of new advances in...

Tensegrity, Dynamic Networks and Complex Systems Biology: Emergence in Structural and Information Networks within Living Cells

Title: Systems Biology and Stem Cell Biology

2 Summary Stem cells are specialized progenitor cells that have the ability to develop into different somatic cell types in the body. Among the different stem cells, embryonic stem (ES) cells are considered the most pluripotent as they have the potential to form every cell type, including other somatic stem cells. ES cells also possess the capability for extensive self-renewing division in cult...

Structure-based systems biology: a zoom lens for the cell.

Systems biology seeks to explain complex biological systems, such as the cell, through the integration of many different types of information. Here, we discuss how the incorporation of high-resolution structural data can provide key molecular details often necessary to understand the complex connection between individual molecules and cell behavior. We suggest a process of zooming on the cell, ...

Dynamics and control of tensegrity systems

This paper introduces rigid body dynamics in a new form, as a matrix differential equation, rather than the traditional vector differential equation. We characterize the dynamics of a broad class of systems of Rigid Bodies in a compact form, requiring no inversion of a mass matrix, yet preserving the second order character of the dynamics (that state space formulations do not preserve). For a s...