Cell Signaling

Cell Signaling - part of a complex system of communication that governs cellular activities and coordinates cell actions. The ability of cells to perceive and correctly respond to their microenvironment is the basis of development, tissue repair, and immunity as well as normal tissue homeostasis. Errors in cellular information processing are responsible for diseases. By understanding cell signaling, diseases can be treated and artificial tissue could potentially be built. Types of cell signaling include: cell-to-cell and gap junctions.

Passive Transport - moving of biochemicals and other atomic or molecular substances across membranes. Unlike active transport, this process does not involve chemical energy. Passive transport is dependent on the permeability of the cell membrane, which, in turn, is dependent on the organization and characteristics of the membrane lipids and proteins. The four main kinds of passive transport are diffusion, facilitated diffusion, filtration and osmosis.





Continuous Spatial Automata - Have a continuum of locations. The state of a location is a finite number of real numbers. Time is also continuous, and the state evolves according to differential equations. One important example is reaction-diffusion textures, differential equations proposed by Alan Turing to explain how chemical reactions could create the stripes on zebras and spots on leopards.[citation needed] When these are approximated by CA, such CAs often yield similar patterns. MacLennan [1] considers continuous spatial automata as a model of computation.