Mathematics Gains Its Way Towards Deciphering Biological Problems

Despite the variation in temperature around us like hot or cold, our body doesn’t fail to maintain the body temperature around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Gulping a whole glass of juice and yet our blood sugar levels remaining fairly constant, keeping the right amount of calcium in our bones and rest out of the bodies – regulation of all these kept just right by our healthy bodies via the concept of homeostasis. Homeostasis is defined as the healthy physiological property of cells, tissues, and organisms that aids in the maintenance and regulation of the body’s stability and function. Breakdown of this system results in illness or, sometimes, death.

Mathematics can help explain and predict these breakdowns, thereby offering new ways of treating the systems to prevent or fix them when things go wrong, as supported by researchers at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's virtual annual meeting.

Homeostasis "is a biological phenomenon and biological systems wouldn't work without it. And if you had detailed, accurate mathematical models, you could numerically explore those systems, find places where this control really happens, and then you could estimate how things go wrong and how you might be able to correct it", says Marty Golubitsky, one of the presenters and a distinguished professor of natural and mathematical sciences at The Ohio State University.

Although the biological reasons behind the homeostasis regulation are well reported, the math behind it is less certain. However, by calculating the ways to keep the body regulated despite breakdowns in the body's systems may help design targeted medical care to needed ones.

Mathematics and Biological Issues

"This is part of precision medicine. People are different, and you need a model that can work on different people. And we think that's what we've developed here", says Best, who is also co-director of Ohio State's Mathematical Biosciences Institute.

The researchers built models to explain how the body maintains homeostasis in a variety of systems. A mathematical concept that seeks to explain how objects relate to one another, and also predict changes to homeostasis in the body, stands at the heart of those models.

The team affirms that this could be useful for biologists and others looking for ways to intervene when homeostasis breaks down. That breakdown causes several problems - too much glucose in a person's blood, for example, or not enough calcium in their bones.

The body’s regulation of dopamine levels through homeostasis and how graph theory helps identify properties of graphs that can help predict homeostasis are both focussed on the models. Thus the team was able to show how dopamine and the enzymes that break it down can be represented as a mathematical formula associated with a graph.

The exploration of the body’s primitive role – homeostasis would thereby contribute any insights on the body’s dynamic shift which can be expanded to various other systems.

Source-Medindia