Simple data-driven models of intracellular calcium dynamics with predictive power.

ALEJANDRA C. VENTURA, LUCIANA BRUNO, AND SILVINA PONCE DAWSON.

PHYSICAL REVIEW E - STATISTICAL PHYSICS, PLASMAS, FLUIDS AND RELATED INTERDISCIPLINARY TOPICS

Año: 2006 vol. 74 p. 119171 - 1191711

1063-651X

Biology is complex. However, it is not clear how much of this complexity must necessarily translate intocomplicated mathematical models of biological processes. Simple models can be appealing to physicists butare usually deceiving for biologists. Complicated models, on the other hand, depend on too many parameterswhose values are frequently unknown. Therefore, complicated models, although in principle more realistic, canlead to erroneous results if they are sensitive to these unknown parameter values. Intracellular calcium signalsprovide an example of utmost biological importance in which the issue of “simple vs complex” can beexplored. In this paper we show that simple models describing the dynamics of intracellular calcium can bedirectly inferred from experimental data, without no a priori information on unknown parameters. A similarapproach can be followed to study other reaction-diffusion systems. In spite of their simplicity, these modelscan provide quantitative information on some of the processes that shape calcium signals, such as the calciumcurrent that underlies an experimental observation. This shows that simple models of biological systems are notlimited to qualitative descriptions.