Systems biology

[dignan]

An interesting article in The Economist discusses the rise of systems biology and makes some points that I think a lot of people here might agree with:

The Human Genome Project, for example, was a triumph of reductionism. But merely listing genes does not explain how they collaborate to build and run an organism. Nor do isolated cells or biological molecules give full insight into the causes and development of diseases that ravage whole organs or organisms. A complete understanding of biological processes means putting the bits back together again—and that is what systems biologists are trying to do, by using the results of a zillion analytical experiments to build software models that behave like parts of living organisms.

http://www.economist.com/science/displa ... d=10018596