Department of Physics, University of Aberdeen, Meston Building, Meston Walk, Aberdeen, UK.
Brief Funct Genomics. 2011 Sep;10(5):266-79. doi: 10.1093/bfgp/elr022. Epub 2011 Sep 8.
It has become commonly accepted that systems approaches to biology are of outstanding importance to gain understanding from the vast amount of data which is presently being generated by advancing high-throughput technologies. The diversity of methods to model pathways and networks has significantly expanded over the past two decades. Modern and traditional approaches are equally important and recent activities aim at integrating the advantages of both. While traditional methods, based on differential equations, are useful to study the dynamics of small systems, modern constraint-based models can be applied to genome-scale systems, but are not able to capture dynamic features. Integrating different approaches is important to develop consistent theoretical descriptions encompassing various scales of biological information. The rapid progress of the field of theoretical systems biology, however, demonstrates how our fundamental theoretical understanding of biology is gaining momentum. The scientific community has apparently accepted the challenge to truly understand the principles of life.
人们普遍认为，系统生物学方法对于从当前高通量技术产生的大量数据中获得理解具有非常重要的意义。在过去的二十年中，用于建模途径和网络的方法的多样性有了显著的扩展。现代和传统方法同样重要，最近的活动旨在整合两者的优势。虽然基于微分方程的传统方法可用于研究小系统的动态，但现代基于约束的模型可应用于基因组规模的系统，但无法捕捉动态特征。整合不同的方法对于开发包含各种生物学信息尺度的一致理论描述非常重要。然而，理论系统生物学领域的快速发展表明，我们对生物学基本理论的理解正在取得进展。科学界显然已经接受了真正理解生命原则的挑战。
