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Integration from proteins to organs: the Physiome Project

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology volume 4, pages 237–243 (2003)Cite this article

Abstract

The Physiome Project will provide a framework for modelling the human body, using computational methods that incorporate biochemical, biophysical and anatomical information on cells, tissues and organs. The main project goals are to use computational modelling to analyse integrative biological function and to provide a system for hypothesis testing.

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Figure 1: Illustration of the relationship between the physiome and other areas of biological organization.
Figure 2: Linking molecular and cellular events with physiological function must deal with wide ranges of length scales and timescales.
Figure 3: Accessing information at the various spatial scales using ontologies and web databases that contain models encoded in markup languages.
Figure 4: The 12 organ systems of the body with illustrations of some of the anatomical models.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions from members of the Bioengineering Institute at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. P.J.H. acknowledges the support of the New Zealand Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, the New Zealand Health Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. He is also grateful for the discussions on the Physiome Project, over many years, with D. Noble (Oxford University, UK), J. Bassingthwaighte (University of Washington in Seattle, USA) and A. McCulloch (University of California at San Diego, USA).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Bioengineering Institute, University of Auckland, New Zealand

    Peter J. Hunter

  2. the Department of Developmental Biology and Anatomy, University of South Carolina, USA

    Thomas K. Borg

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Correspondence to Peter J. Hunter.

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FURTHER INFORMATION

AnatML

BioPSE

CellML

CMISS

Continuity

E-Cell project

Gene Ontology Consortium

Gepasi

Global open biological ontologies (GOBO)

The Bioengineering Institute

The IUPS Physiome Project

The Microcirculation Physiome Project

The National Resource for Cell Analysis and Modeling

The World Wide Web Consortium

Systems Biology Workbench

Virtual Cell Project

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Hunter, P., Borg, T. Integration from proteins to organs: the Physiome Project. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 4, 237–243 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrm1054

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