Modelling provides another way of looking at biological systems and also at medical phenomena. Transporting epithelia are cells which form in layers in the body. Their primary function is to pump fluid from one side of the cell to the other. In the kidneys, epithelial cells reabsorb the filtered blood. The predictions were not consistent with experiments.
Alternative mechanisms are now under investigation by kidney physiologists.
A model can be used to investigate situations that are not easily amenable to experiment. We at QUT are doing research on the retinotopic nature of the mapping of the visual field onto human visual cortex. What we want to know is how much of the visual cortex is devoted to each part of the visual field. We cannot do invasive experiments on the human brain. We are measuring electrical impulses on the scalp, then using a mathematical model to locate which part of the brain is active when a light is presented in the visual field.