[en] genome-scale networks ; systems biology ; constraint based modelling ; mathematical Modelling ; metabolism ; dynamic systems
[en] It has become commonly accepted that systems approaches to biology are of outstanding importance to gain understanding from the vast amount of data which is presently being generated by advancing high-throughput technologies. The diversity of methods to model pathways and networks has significantly expanded over the past two decades. Modern and traditional approaches are equally important and recent activities aim at integrating the advantages of both. While traditional methods, based on differential equations, are useful to study the dynamics of small systems, modern constraint-based models can be applied to genome-scale systems, but are not able to capture dynamic features. Integrating different approaches is important to develop consistent theoretical descriptions encompassing various scales of biological information. The rapid progress of the field of theoretical systems biology, however, demonstrates how our fundamental theoretical understanding of biology is gaining momentum. The scientific community has apparently accepted the challenge to truly understand the principles of life.
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Briefings in functional Genomics following peer review. The version of record, Systems approaches to modelling pathways and networks, Briefings in Functional Genomics (2011) 10 (5): 266-279, doi:10.1093/bfgp/elr022 is available online at http://bfg.oxfordjournals.org/content/10/5/266.full.
[University of Aberdeen > Institute of Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology]
