Cai Fei-Fei, Zhou Wen-Jun, Wu Rong, Su Shi-Bing
Research Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine Complexity System, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, 201203 China.
Chin Med. 2018 Dec 29;13:65. doi: 10.1186/s13020-018-0221-x. eCollection 2018.
Systems biology is an academic field that attempts to integrate different levels of information to understand how biological systems function. It is the study of the composition of all components of a biological system and their interactions under specific conditions. The core of systems biology is holistic and systematic research, which is different from the manner of thinking and research of all other branches of biology to date. Chinese herbal formulae (CHF) are the main form of Chinese medicine and are composed of single Chinese herbal medicines (CHMs) with pharmacological and pharmacodynamic compatibility. When single CHMs are combined into CHF, the result is different from the original effect of a single drug and can be better adapted to more diseases with complex symptoms. CHF represent a complex system with multiple components, targets and effects. Therefore, the use of systems biology is conducive to revealing the complex characteristics of CHF. With the rapid development of omics technologies, systems biology has been widely and increasingly applied to the study of the basis of the pharmacological substances, action targets and mechanisms of CHF. To meet the challenges of multiomics synthesis-intensive studies and system dynamics research in CHF, this paper reviews the common techniques of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and metagenomics and their applications in research on CHF.
系统生物学是一个学术领域，它试图整合不同层次的信息，以了解生物系统如何运作。它研究生物系统所有组成部分的构成及其在特定条件下的相互作用。系统生物学的核心是整体和系统的研究，这与迄今为止生物学的所有其他分支的思维和研究方式不同。中药方剂是中医的主要形式，由具有药理和药效配伍的单味中药组成。当单味中药组合成中药方剂时，其结果不同于单一药物的原始效果，并且可以更好地适应更多具有复杂症状的疾病。中药方剂代表了一个具有多种成分、靶点和作用的复杂系统。因此，运用系统生物学有利于揭示中药方剂的复杂特性。随着组学技术的迅速发展，系统生物学已被广泛且越来越多地应用于中药方剂药理物质基础、作用靶点及作用机制的研究。为应对中药方剂多组学综合密集型研究和系统动力学研究的挑战，本文综述了基因组学、转录组学、蛋白质组学、代谢组学和宏基因组学的常用技术及其在中药方剂研究中的应用。
