Russell Robert B, Aloy Patrick
European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Meyerhofstrasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany.
Nat Chem Biol. 2008 Nov;4(11):666-73. doi: 10.1038/nchembio.119.
Biological interaction networks have been in the scientific limelight for nearly a decade. Increasingly, the concept of network biology and its various applications are becoming more commonplace in the community. Recent years have seen networks move from pretty pictures with limited application to solid concepts that are increasingly used to understand the fundamentals of biology. They are no longer merely results of postgenome analysis projects, but are now the starting point of many of the most exciting new scientific developments. We discuss here recent progress in identifying and understanding interaction networks, new tools that use them in predictive ways in exciting areas of biology, and how they have become the focus of many efforts to study, design and tinker with biological systems, with applications in biomedicine, bioengineering, ecology and beyond.
生物相互作用网络在科学界备受关注已近十年。网络生物学的概念及其各种应用在该领域正变得越来越普遍。近年来，网络已从应用有限的漂亮图片发展成为日益用于理解生物学基本原理的坚实概念。它们不再仅仅是后基因组分析项目的结果，而是如今许多最令人兴奋的新科学进展的起点。我们在此讨论在识别和理解相互作用网络方面的最新进展、在生物学令人兴奋的领域以预测方式使用它们的新工具，以及它们如何成为许多研究、设计和改造生物系统努力的焦点，并在生物医学、生物工程、生态学及其他领域有应用。
