Ouzounis Christos, Mazière Pierre
Computational Genomics Group, The European Bioinformatics Institute, EMBL Cambridge Outstation, Cambridge CB10 1SD, UK.
Biosystems. 2006 Jul;85(1):6-10. doi: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2006.02.007. Epub 2006 Jun 6.
We briefly review the use of metaphors in science and progressively focus on fields from biology and molecular biology to genomics and bioinformatics. We discuss how metaphors are both a tool for scientific exploration and a medium for public communication of complex subjects, by various short examples. Finally, we propose a metaphor for systems biology that provides an illuminating perspective for the ambitious goals of this field and delimits its current agenda.
我们简要回顾了隐喻在科学中的应用，并逐步聚焦于从生物学、分子生物学到基因组学和生物信息学等领域。我们通过各种简短的例子，讨论了隐喻如何既是科学探索的工具，又是复杂主题的公众传播媒介。最后，我们提出了一个适用于系统生物学的隐喻，它为该领域的宏伟目标提供了一个具有启发性的视角，并界定了其当前议程。
