Meeting report: in silico cell signaling underground

Cell signaling is becoming a darling of systems biology. Because cell signaling is a relatively well understood, complex, but not overwhelming area of biology, it has become an attractive focal point for computational modeling and simulation efforts by engineers, computer scientists, mathematicians, and systems biologists. The flow of information within and between cells points to a possible conceptual and theoretical kinship with similar phenomena in computer networks, communication theory, information theory, and information flow in engineered systems. Although still in its infancy, the field is experiencing a growth in interest, as evidenced by the poster sessions at the recent International Conference on Systems Biology (ICSB 2002). This report focuses on some of those efforts to mathematically model and simulate cell signaling and signal transduction networks.