For more than a century biologists made great strides in understanding the complex tapestry of life by tracing the smaller and shorter threads in its many patterns. This reductionist approach, which breaks complicated processes into their component parts to understand them better, has produced extraordinary advances. We take it for granted, for example, that DNA molecules—and not proteins—carry our genetic information, but that was a matter of huge debate and study in the early 20th century. (Back then, DNA seemed much too simple a molecule, chemically speaking, to be capable of maintaining generations of hereditary information; proteins, on the other hand, were wonderfully complex and seemed more equal to the task.) More recently, neurologists have traced the formation (and pruning) of countless connections among neurons in the brain that make the process of learning resemble growing a garden more than programming a computer.

Today's researchers, however, are increasingly hitting the limits of reductionism. They realize that you cannot truly understand life without also having a way to deal with its complexity. Genes do not exist in isolation—they affect one another and, somewhat inconveniently for study, are affected by other molecules and chemicals. We understand that our consciousness—our awareness of our own existence and ability to see ourselves as individuals—must somehow emerge from those many, many connections in our brains, but we do not yet know how.

A new field of study—called systems biology—allows investigators to study more of this complexity without going crazy. It requires biologists to be just as comfortable working with computers as they are working with microscopes. And it offers tremendous promise. Alan Aderem, a co-founder of the Institute of Systems Biology in Seattle, Wash., makes a strong case for the idea that systems biology will help us finally make successful vaccines against certain illnesses that have so far resisted our efforts, including AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. His article, "Fast Track to Vaccines" appears in the May 2011 issue of Scientific American.

Indeed, a systems biology approach is being introduced in some medical schools, colleges and even high schools. Watch this video, from Virginia Commonwealth University, to get a general idea of what systems biology is all about and how high school biology students are learning to use computers to make sense of the most intricate aspects of life.

3 Comments

1. 1. lakefield 09:31 AM 4/25/11

   Sorry if I seem a little cynical, but this article appears to be an advertisement for Virginia Commonwealth University and the BioBike application rather than an article about a scientific topic.

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2. 2. Christine Gorman in reply to lakefield 10:48 AM 4/25/11

   Hi lakefield,
   My purpose as a Scientific American editor in writing this short article was to introduce people to the whole concept of systems biology. I wanted to help people who read our featured piece by Alan Aderem who were interested in learning more about systems biology without having to take a graduate level course. I thought VCU's video did a very good job at introduction--despite using only VCU people to talk about the topic.
   Christine

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3. 3. hoamingin 10:23 AM 4/26/11

   Biological systems are certainly complex, but genuinely understanding them takes a complete change in perspective. For example, where does the complexity come from, and why so complex?
   
   Biological systems are made up of long strings of individual processes, each of which is as simple as a protein or other molecule attaching to another molecule, or disengaging when a specific set of conditions occurs. No process can, by itself, do anything significant, but chains of processes somehow produce an action and govern timing of that action.
   
   Individual processes are simple and reliable. Their reliability means they are inflexible. Flexibility in the nature and timing of actions comes at the cost of complex strings and interactions among them needed to initiate actions and modify timing to produce flexible behaviours.
   
   Now go and look at the rules and assumptions of biology, which are based on Natural Selection, which Darwin based on a decision to reject the effect of external conditions. Instead, he attributed change to internal qualities of individuals that favour them in incessant struggle for existence.
   
   So you can see why standard biology reports focus on behaviours of individual entities or agents and largely ignore the context. Reports examine an inflammatory immune response, identify the inflammatory agent and look for a way to kill it, as if the disease is the immune response, rather than whatever triggered the response. I am sure the results of many focused studies are confounded because the "behaviours" of targeted molecules are conditional on many variables in the system, or external to that system.
   
   So I think new research techniques that better accommodate the complexity of systems show promise. But how about getting biologists' heads pointing in the right direction first?
   
   Start by taking a serious look at the rules and assumptions of biology and at the C19th cultural beliefs on which Darwin based his explanation, on which biologists based their assumptions.
   
   Most biologists now believe external conditions have major effect, in effect reversing Darwin's decision. Genetics has found the reverse of just about every assumption Darwin made about variations. More variations do not create change, they are a sign of a lack of change. Change is not the result of emergence of diversity, but the elimination of diversity by another mechanism.
   
   And how did all those processes get together to do anything if they were all competing?
   
   David Bainbridge
   www.ideasintuitionandthinking.com
   http://ideasintuitionandthinking.com/blog

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