Systems biology: the 'new biotechnology' Editorial overview

摘要

Systems Biology is a broad research topic that aims at integrating biological data in a quantitative fashion with the objective to get new biological insight. Generally systems biology encompasses two approaches: top-down systems biology and bottom-up systems biology. Top-down systems biology is following the genomics revolution that has resulted in the generation of large experimental data sets using different high-throughput, or omics, techniques. These data can be analyzed using statistical methods, including different types of clustering. However, it has generally been found that more information is obtained when these data are integrated with biological networks. Hereby it is possible to obtain information about subnetworks, or biological modules, that respond to different perturbations, and hereby systems biology provide new insight into biology that can be used in biotechnology and medicine. Bottom-up systems biology involves the reconstruction of mathematical models from known biological interactions. The hereby reconstructed models can then be used for simulation and often emergent properties are discovered from this approach. Furthermore, bottom-up systems biology enables evaluation of dynamic responses of complex biological systems, for example, following genetic and/or environmental perturbations.