Systems Biology Article Index for
Systems 		Website Links For
Systems 		 

Information About

Systems Biology
  CATEGORIES ABOUT SYSTEMS BIOLOGY
   
bioinformatics
   
biology
   
systems biologybioinformatics
   
biology
   
systems biology
   
bioinformatics
   
biology
   
interdisciplinary fields
   
systems science
   
APPAREL
BABY
BEAUTY
BOOKS
CAR TOYS
CELL PHONES
DVD'S
ELECTRONICS
GOURMET FOOD
GROCERIES
HEALTH & PERSONAL
HOME & GARDEN
JEWELRY
MUSIC
MUSIC INSTRUMENTS
OFFICE PRODUCTS
SOFTWARE
SPORTING GOODS
TOOLS & HARDWARE
TOYS
VIDEO GAMES
SHOPPING HOME
MORE SHOPPING...




OVERVIEW

Systems biology can be considered from a number of different aspects:

  • Some sources discuss systems biology as a field of study, particularly, the study of the interactions between the components of ''biological systems'', and how these interactions give rise to the function and behavior of that system (for example, the Enzymes and Metabolites in a Metabolic Pathway )12.


  • Other sources consider systems biology as a Paradigm , usually defined in antithesis to the so-called Reductionist paradigm, although fully consistent with the Scientific Method . The distinction between the two paradigms is referred to in these quotations:


"The reductionist approach has successfully identified most of the components and many of the interactions but, unfortunately, offers no convincing concepts or methods to understand how system properties emerge...the pluralism of causes and effects in biological networks is better addressed by observing, through quantitiative measures, multiple components simultaneously and by rigorous data integration with mathematical models"


"Systems biology...is about putting together rather than taking apart, integration rather than reduction. It requires that we develop ways of thinking about integration that are as rigorous as our reductionist programmes, but different....It means changing our philosophy, in the full sense of the term"


  • Still other sources view systems biology in terms of the operational protocols used for performing research, namely a cycle composed of theory, computational modelling to propose specific testable hypotheses about a biological system, experimental validation, and then using the newly acquired quantitative description of cells or cell processes to refine the computational model or theory.34. Since the objective is a model of the interactions in a system, the experimental techniques that most suit systems biology are those that are system-wide and attempt to be as complete as possible. Therefore, Transcriptomics , Metabolomics , Proteomics and high-throughput techniques are used to collect quantitative data for the construction and validation of models.


  • Finally, some sources see it as a socioscientific phenomenon defined by the strategy of pursuing integration of complex data about the interactions in biological systems from diverse experimental sources using interdisciplinary tools and personnel.


This variety of viewpoints is illustrative of the fact that systems biology refers to a cluster of peripherally overlapping concepts rather than a single well-delineated field. However the term has widespread currency and popularity as of 2007 , with chairs and institutes of systems biology proliferating worldwide.


HISTORY

Systems Biology finds its roots in quantitative modelling of Enzyme Kinetics , a discipline that flourished between 1900 and 1970 , but also in the simulations developed to study neurophysiology, and the control theory, or Cybernetics .

One of the theorists who can be seen as a precursor of systems biology is Ludwig Von Bertalanffy with his General Systems Theory . In 1952, the British neurophysiologists and nobel prize winners Alan Lloyd Hodgkin and Andrew Fielding Huxley constructed a mathematical model explaining the action potential propagating along the axon of a neuronal cell. In 1960, Denis Noble developed the first computer model of a beating heart.

The 1960 s and 1970 s saw the development of several approaches to study complex molecular systems, such as the Metabolic Control Analysis and the Biochemical Systems Theory . The successes of Molecular Biology throughout the 1980 s, coupled with a skepticism toward Theoretical Biology , that then promised more than it achieved, caused the quantitative modelling of biological processes to become a somewhat minor field.

However the birth of functional genomics in the 1990 s meant that large quantities of high quality data became available, while the computing power exploded, making more realistic models possible. In 1997, the group of Masaru Tomita published the first quantitative model of the metabolism of a whole (hypothetical) cell.