Chifman Julia, Laubenbacher Reinhard, Torti Suzy V
Department of Cancer Biology, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2014;844:201-25. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-2095-2_10.
Iron is critical to the survival of almost all living organisms. However, inappropriately low or high levels of iron are detrimental and contribute to a wide range of diseases. Recent advances in the study of iron metabolism have revealed multiple intricate pathways that are essential to the maintenance of iron homeostasis. Further, iron regulation involves processes at several scales, ranging from the subcellular to the organismal. This complexity makes a systems biology approach crucial, with its enabling technology of computational models based on a mathematical description of regulatory systems. Systems biology may represent a new strategy for understanding imbalances in iron metabolism and their underlying causes.
铁对于几乎所有生物的生存都至关重要。然而,铁水平过低或过高都不合适,会导致多种疾病。铁代谢研究的最新进展揭示了维持铁稳态所必需的多个复杂途径。此外,铁调节涉及从亚细胞到生物体的多个尺度的过程。这种复杂性使得系统生物学方法至关重要,其基于调节系统数学描述的计算模型技术能够实现这一点。系统生物学可能代表了一种理解铁代谢失衡及其潜在原因的新策略。