| Computational Cell Biology | |||||
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Our research is mainly focused on the computational study of bacterial chemotaxis in E. coli.
We have developed a number of computer programs as investigative tools to study chemotaxis. These include the dedicated, deterministic simulator BCT and two general-purpose, stochastic programs StochSim and Smoldyn. Both stochastic programs are particle- rather than concentration-based, but differ in that Smoldyn has explicit 3-D spatial representation and incorporates diffusion, while StochSim is limited to representing the spread of conformational states within a cluster of receptors.
There are still many aspects of bacterial chemotaxis that remain unexplained. However, the abundance of biophysical data on swimming cells and kinetic parameters for the intracellular reactions, together with the general principles illustrated, mean that bacterial chemotaxis has proved attractive to a diverse community of modellers within the fields of mathematics, physics and engineering, as well as biology.
| Site developed and maintained by Matthew Levin. This page updated 3 May 2006. |