Tracing Life's Circuitry

摘要

In September, Harvard University opened its medical school's first new department in 20 years. Its focus: systems biology, one of the hottest—and most elusive—new fields in biology. The nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had already started a Computational and Systems Biology Initiative with 80 faculty members. And the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, is following suit, planning its own systems biology institute. All are forging links between biologists, mathematicians, and engineers. Systems biology is fast becoming the academic topic du jour. Fueling this movement is a gush of data. New technologies have inundated researchers with a deluge of information on genes, proteins, cellular dynamics, and organisms' responses to mutations and the environment. But they haven't explained what makes whole organisms tick. Systems biologists are taking on that challenge, relying heavily on mathematics and statistics to integrate da-ta into a more complete picture of how biological networks from cells to whole organisms func-tion. They are building mod-els and making predictions about how biological systems will behave; the ultimate goal is to understand deep mysteries—such as how cells divide, animals develop, plants flower, and humans breathe.