Department of Mathematics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, United States.
Curr Opin Genet Dev. 2010 Dec;20(6):626-33. doi: 10.1016/j.gde.2010.09.006.
The field of systems biology studies how the interactions among individual components (e.g. genes and proteins) yield interesting and complex behavior. The circadian (daily) timekeeping system in mammals is an ideal system to study complexity because of its many biological scales (from genes to animal behavior). A wealth of data at each of these scales has recently been discovered. Within each scale, modeling can advance our understanding of challenging problems that arise in studying mammalian timekeeping. However, future work must focus on bridging the multiple spatial and temporal scales in the modeling of SCN network. Here we review recent advances, and then delve into a few areas that are promising research directions. We also discuss the flavor of modeling needed (simple or detailed) as well as new techniques that are needed to meet the challenges in modeling data across scales.
系统生物学领域研究的是个体组成部分（例如基因和蛋白质）之间的相互作用如何产生有趣而复杂的行为。哺乳动物的昼夜（日常）计时系统是研究复杂性的理想系统，因为它具有许多生物学尺度（从基因到动物行为）。最近在每个尺度上都发现了大量数据。在每个尺度内，建模可以增进我们对研究哺乳动物计时过程中出现的具有挑战性问题的理解。但是，未来的工作必须集中在 SCN 网络建模的多个时空尺度上。在这里，我们回顾了最近的进展，然后深入探讨了一些有前途的研究方向。我们还讨论了建模所需的模型风格（简单或详细）以及在跨尺度建模数据方面所需的新技术。
