A Blueprint for Systems Biology.

Abstract

Featured Article: Ideker T, Thorsson V, Ranish JA, Christmas R, Buhler J, Eng JK, et al. Integrated genomic and proteomic analyses of a systematically perturbed metabolic network. Science 2001;292:929–34.4 By the mid-1990s, it was clear that we would soon be able to sequence the human genome and that this would enable many other types of molecular measurements in cells and tissues. Less apparent was how these different molecular technologies and their data should be integrated to map biological structure and understand function. That is, having systematically sequenced the DNA bases in a genome, could similar systematic concepts and tools be devised to understand the rest of the human biological informational system (RNA, proteins, metabolites, lipids) and their roles in biology? Around that time, one of us (LH) had moved from Caltech to start a new department, called Molecular Biotechnology, in the medical school of the University of Washington. This department was based on the radical idea (at that time) that biology at its core was an information science, and that the path to understanding and integrating the genome and other types of biological information would be enabled only by joining the skills and expertise of biologists with those of leading investigators from engineering, chemistry, and mathematics, as well as the physical and computer sciences. This concept captured the imagination of the other of us (TI), who had studied computer …