Title :
The necessity of a theory of biology for tissue engineering: metabolism-repair systems
Author :
Ganguli, Suman ; Hunt, C. Anthony
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Biopharmaceutical Sci., California Univ., San Francisco, CA, USA
Abstract :
Since there is no widely accepted global theory of biology, tissue engineering and bioengineering lack a theoretical understanding of the systems being engineered. By default, tissue engineering operates with a "reductionist" theoretical approach, inherited from traditional engineering of non-living materials. Long term, that approach is inadequate, since it ignores essential aspects of biology. Metabolism-repair systems are a theoretical framework which explicitly represents two "functional" aspects of living organisms: self-repair and self-replication. Since repair and replication are central to tissue engineering, we advance metabolism-repair systems as a potential theoretical framework for tissue engineering. We present an overview of the framework, and indicate directions to pursue for extending it to the context of tissue engineering. We focus on biological networks, both metabolic and cellular, as one such direction. The construction of these networks, in turn, depends on biological protocols. Together these concepts may help point the way to a global theory of biology appropriate for tissue engineering.
Keywords :
cellular biophysics; reviews; tissue engineering; bioengineering; biological networks; cellular networks; metabolic networks; metabolism-repair systems; self-repair; self-replication; tissue engineering; Biological materials; Biological systems; Biomedical engineering; Cells (biology); Cellular networks; Organisms; Protocols; Systems biology; Systems engineering and theory; Tissue engineering; Theoretical biology; bioengineering; metabolism-repair systems; self-repair and self-replication;
Conference_Titel :
Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2004. IEMBS '04. 26th Annual International Conference of the IEEE
Conference_Location :
San Francisco, CA
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-8439-3
DOI :
10.1109/IEMBS.2004.1404390