The new field of Systems Biology may extend biology from being merely reactive to being more predictive. Mavens in the field include Alfred Gilman, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in medicine, and Leroy Hood at the Institute for Systems Biology, according to a recent article in Wired.
Wired News: "All Bio Systems Are Go" says that the field "incorporates analysis of the expression of hundreds of different genes and proteins that give clues into the origins of cancer and other diseases. Systems biologists aim to understand how cells work by seeing biology as a network of systems, consisting of genes written in DNA, which send messages about the cell written in RNA, which provide the recipes for proteins, which do the work of life in our bodies. Understanding the networks will lead to tests that will identify diseases such as cancer, diabetes and AIDS."
Leroy Hood and David Galas are authors of a recent article in Nature that addresses the potential of systems biology approaches in understanding the digital nature of life as revealed by the decoding of the genome. The Digital Code of DNA," Nature 421, 444 - 448 (23 January 2003); doi:10.1038/nature01410
Posted by dougsimpson at November 3, 2004 05:25 PM | TrackBack