Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801 USA.
Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801 USA.
Emerg Top Life Sci. 2021 May 21;5(2):231-237. doi: 10.1042/ETLS20200276.
Plants are complex organisms that adapt to changes in their environment using an array of regulatory mechanisms that span across multiple levels of biological organization. Due to this complexity, it is difficult to predict emergent properties using conventional approaches that focus on single levels of biology such as the genome, transcriptome, or metabolome. Mathematical models of biological systems have emerged as useful tools for exploring pathways and identifying gaps in our current knowledge of biological processes. Identification of emergent properties, however, requires their vertical integration across biological scales through multiscale modeling. Multiscale models that capture and predict these emergent properties will allow us to predict how plants will respond to a changing climate and explore strategies for plant engineering. In this review, we (1) summarize the recent developments in plant multiscale modeling; (2) examine multiscale models of microbial systems that offer insight to potential future directions for the modeling of plant systems; (3) discuss computational tools and resources for developing multiscale models; and (4) examine future directions of the field.
植物是复杂的生物体，它们使用一系列跨越多个生物组织层次的调节机制来适应环境变化。由于这种复杂性，使用传统方法很难预测新兴特性，这些传统方法通常关注基因组、转录组或代谢组等单一层次的生物学。生物系统的数学模型已经成为探索生物过程途径和识别知识空白的有用工具。然而，新兴特性的识别需要通过多尺度建模在生物尺度上进行垂直整合。捕获和预测这些新兴特性的多尺度模型将使我们能够预测植物对气候变化的反应，并探索植物工程的策略。在这篇综述中，我们总结了植物多尺度建模的最新进展；考察了微生物系统的多尺度模型，这些模型为植物系统建模的潜在未来方向提供了启示；讨论了开发多尺度模型的计算工具和资源；并考察了该领域的未来方向。
