Theoretical Cell Biology

From NECSIWiki

It is often said that the 20th century was the century of the atom and the 21st century will be that of the cell. This is perhaps because of the fact that the cell (~10 micron in diameter) is so much more complex than the atom (~ 0.1 nanometer in diameter) that it would take at least one century longer for the human brain to figure out how the cell works than it took to figure out how the atom works. An interesting corollary of this conjecture may be that the emergence of theoretical cell biology as a distinct biological discipline would lag behind the emergence of theoretical atomic physics by about one century.

If we can agree that theoretical atomic physics emerged between 1866 when L. Boltzmann (1844-1906) wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the kinetic theory of gases and 1913 when N. Bohr (1885-1962) published his first theoretical model of the hydrogen atom, then it may be predicted that theoretical cell biology would emerge between the middle decades of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century. Table 1 below lists the landmark events in the history of theoretical physics and the corresponding events in the development of theoretical cell biology, as speculated in a recent publication [see S. Ji, "Semiotics of Life: A Unified Theory of Molecular Machines, Cells, the Mind, Peircean Signs and the Universe", in Reports, Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics, Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona, Spain, the text being availablea t http://www.grlmc.com, under Publications].

Table 1. A possible analogy between atomic physics and cell biology. ________________________________________________________________

                 Theoretical          Theoretical 
   Landmarks     Atomic Physics       Cell Biology

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1. Beginning Boltzmanns' Watson-Crick's

                 kinetic theory      double helix model
                 of gases (1866)      of DNA (1953)

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2. Concept Planck's quantum Conformons (1974)

                 of action (2000)     IDSs (1985)

                                      Cell language (1997)

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3. Model Bohr's model of the Bhopalator

                 the hydrogen atom    model of the cell 
                 (1913)               (1985)

                                      the computational 
                                      model of the cell
                                      (2015?)

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4. Theory Quantum mechanics Conformon theory of

                 (1925)               molecular machines 
                                      (1974)

                                      Cell language theory
                                      (1977)

                                      Molecular information
                                      theory (2004)

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5. Philosophy Complementarity Complementarism

                 (1915)               (1993)

                                      the Tarragonator 
                                      (2005)

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