He has made everything beautiful in its time.
He has also set eternity in the hearts of men;
yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
"Moving and staying put might seem totally different, but they have one key thing in common: force. It takes force for a cell to grab onto a given surface and pull its way through the body, and also to hang on tight against the everyday strains of gravity, blood flow or simple physical movements.
The machinery that cells use to generate such force is a sophisticated mix of “cables,” made of a protein called actin that
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| Cell Cables |
Cells have a dizzying array of options for how to lay out their cable networks and where to stick their molecular motors. Various arrangements are responsible for why muscle cells produce force differently than skin cells, and why some cells are good at hanging on for dear life whereas others are better at crawling around.
The job of us mathematicians is to come up with equations that help explain how those cables and motors (and some other bits of biological machinery) assemble into a cell’s driving engine. With any luck, our equations can help biologists understand what they’re seeing in the lab, and maybe even to make better choices about what kinds of experiments to perform.....to help answer nine-year-old me’s question about why we don’t all fall apart." ScientificAmerican
