Measuring functionality of cells in quantitative manner

Blue Gene project = A tiny part of the brain has been simulated by IBM in “Blue Brain” project – simulating 100,000 neurons containing 30 million connections that provide precise electrical conversations between them. IBM intend to scale it up to the real size of human brain.
If “a neuron's natural firing time is delayed by just a few milliseconds, the entire sequence of events was disrupted. The connected cells became strangers to one another.” (1) The main question remains to be answered like all other areas of systems biology – and that is about the system rather than its components! “The problem is that if you ask a hundred computational neuroscientists to build a functional model, you'll get a hundred different answers.”(1) To model functional interactions between molecules merely in one single cell of the heart, we need 10-30 giant computers such as Blue Gene. Hence, there are no enough materials available to actually enable us to simulate the entire human heart. (2) Information regarding interactions resides neither in the genome nor even in the individual proteins that genes code for. It lies at the level of protein interactions within the context of subcellular, cellular, tissue, organ, and system structures.(3) Advanced computer algorithms and hardware have made it possible to quantify these interactions between different components of cells. Computer-intensive quantitative measures of functionality are developed to the edges for providing precise quantification of systems physiology.

(1) http://seedmagazine.com/news/2008/03/out_of_the_blue.php
(2) Denise Noble, computational modelling of biological system; http://noble.physiol.ox.ac.uk/People/DNoble/
(3) Modelling the heart from genes to cells up to the whole organs; http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/295/5560/1678