Rivas Ariel L, Leitner Gabriel, Jankowski Mark D, Hoogesteijn Almira L, Iandiorio Michelle J, Chatzipanagiotou Stylianos, Ioannidis Anastasios, Blum Shlomo E, Piccinini Renata, Antoniades Athos, Fazio Jane C, Apidianakis Yiorgos, Fair Jeanne M, Van Regenmortel Marc H V
Center for Global Health, Division of Infectious Diseases, School of Medicine, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, United States.
National Mastitis Center, Kimron Veterinary Institute, Bet Dagan, Israel.
Front Immunol. 2017 May 31;8:612. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2017.00612. eCollection 2017.
Evolution has conserved "economic" systems that perform many functions, faster or better, with less. For example, three to five leukocyte types protect from thousands of pathogens. To achieve so much with so little, biological systems combine their limited elements, creating complex structures. Yet, the prevalent research paradigm is reductionist. Focusing on infectious diseases, reductionist and non-reductionist views are here described. The literature indicates that reductionism is associated with information loss and errors, while non-reductionist operations can extract more information from the same data. When designed to capture one-to-many/many-to-one interactions-including the use of arrows that connect pairs of consecutive observations-non-reductionist (spatial-temporal) constructs eliminate data variability from all dimensions, except along one line, while arrows describe the directionality of temporal changes that occur along the line. To validate the patterns detected by non-reductionist operations, reductionist procedures are needed. Integrated (non-reductionist and reductionist) methods can (i) distinguish data subsets that differ immunologically and statistically; (ii) differentiate false-negative from -positive errors; (iii) discriminate disease stages; (iv) capture , multilevel interactions that consider the patient, the microbe, and antibiotic-mediated responses; and (v) assess dynamics. Integrated methods provide repeatable and biologically interpretable information.
进化保留了“经济”系统，这些系统能用较少的资源更快、更好地执行多种功能。例如，三到五种白细胞类型就能抵御数千种病原体。生物系统用如此少的元素实现如此多的功能，它们将有限的元素组合起来，创造出复杂的结构。然而，目前流行的研究范式是还原论的。本文以传染病为例，阐述还原论和非还原论观点。文献表明，还原论会导致信息丢失和错误，而非还原论操作能从相同数据中提取更多信息。当设计用于捕捉一对多/多对一的相互作用时——包括使用连接连续观测值对的箭头——非还原论（时空）结构会消除除一条线之外所有维度的数据变异性，而箭头描述沿该线发生的时间变化的方向性。为了验证非还原论操作检测到的模式，需要还原论程序。综合（非还原论和还原论）方法能够：（i）区分在免疫学和统计学上不同的数据子集；（ii）区分假阴性和假阳性错误；（iii）辨别疾病阶段；（iv）捕捉考虑患者、微生物和抗生素介导反应的多层次相互作用；以及（v）评估动态变化。综合方法能提供可重复且具有生物学可解释性的信息。
