Yes, the market analogy seems like a valuable one to lean into. Textbooks tend to focus on a control systems approach to describing protein and cellular regulation and action. The body is viewed as an intricate machine, which is not designed, but has a design determined by evolutionary forces which acts to achieve functions conducive to reproduction. This tends to make me frame cells and proteins as components of a machine, which only gain an independent “agency” of their own in the case of cancer.
I can see two broad strategies for incorporating this into our understanding.
One is for communication and study purposes. By using familiar and vivid frames, we might be able to teach about biology in a more compelling manner.
This seems useful, but even better would be to use economic frames to derive truly novel insights. In my lab, control systems are the dominant framework for understanding the systems under study. It’s a large, old, world-class lab populated by scientists who are smarter and more experienced than me, so I find it likely that this tradition has resulted at least in part from its massive, sustained, demonstrated utility.
What sort of predictions or strategies can we make by using economic frames, beyond simply repackaging known mechanisms into novel language and analogies? How can economic frames lead us to concrete experimental techniques in order to test and build on these novel insights? What are the challenges and limitations of an economic framing of cellular biology?
Yes, the market analogy seems like a valuable one to lean into. Textbooks tend to focus on a control systems approach to describing protein and cellular regulation and action. The body is viewed as an intricate machine, which is not designed, but has a design determined by evolutionary forces which acts to achieve functions conducive to reproduction. This tends to make me frame cells and proteins as components of a machine, which only gain an independent “agency” of their own in the case of cancer.
I can see two broad strategies for incorporating this into our understanding.
One is for communication and study purposes. By using familiar and vivid frames, we might be able to teach about biology in a more compelling manner.
This seems useful, but even better would be to use economic frames to derive truly novel insights. In my lab, control systems are the dominant framework for understanding the systems under study. It’s a large, old, world-class lab populated by scientists who are smarter and more experienced than me, so I find it likely that this tradition has resulted at least in part from its massive, sustained, demonstrated utility.
What sort of predictions or strategies can we make by using economic frames, beyond simply repackaging known mechanisms into novel language and analogies? How can economic frames lead us to concrete experimental techniques in order to test and build on these novel insights? What are the challenges and limitations of an economic framing of cellular biology?