John Ross of the Chemistry Department of Stanford University is funded by the Physical Chemistry Program of the Chemistry Division to study new approaches to complex reaction mechanisms. In this research information theoretic methods will be used to determine the mechanisms of oscillating and possibly chaotic equations. Genetic algorithms are also proposed for selective inductive construction of a reaction mechanism by optimization of the fit to experiments. These techniques will be used to study the role of calcium oscillations in cell replication (mitosis). This research will improve our understanding on the mechanism of oscillating reactions and how they affect important biological processes.
