Systems Biology

Systems biology has emerged as a highly interdisciplinary field that has created broad enthusiasm in the scientific community. Systems biology is in vogue because of its potential to revolutionize not only biology but also medicine. Developments are anticipated that will change how we think about disease and how we approach therapeutic intervention. Perhaps the boldest vision of this future is presented by Dr. Leroy Hood, President of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. He has been a protagonist and the main driving force of the underlying concept. According to Dr. Hood, systems biology will make possible a new era of medical care comprising predictive, preventive, personalized and particapatory (P4) medicine. While this vision appears futuristic, it has enticed both academic scientific communities and pharmaceutical industry R&D organizations. Systems biology ultimately attempts to understand biological systems at the molecular level. Examples of such systems are subcellular regulatory circuits with all their components, cells, organs, as well as - tire organisms. Over the past decade, technologies have been developed that enable systems-level interrogations, e.g., gene expression profiling, proteomics, and metabonomics, to name a few. Scientists have used such platforms to accumulate a tremendous amount of data. Although we have learned a great deal by collecting such detailed information, it seems our understanding has not similarly increased.