Chapter Two - Systems and Dynamical Medicine: The Roles of Translational Bioinformatics

Abstract

The emerging fields of pharmacogenomics and systems biology may enable fundamental advancements and serve as the scientific basis that can be translated into personalized and systems medicine. Focusing on the interrelationships at various system levels and scales, systems biology provides a comprehensive view of health and diseases. Translational bioinformatics approaches such as data integration and mining can be applied to understand the complex datasets from both population groups and individuals. Methods in translational bioinformatics would be critical for systems biology to overcome the data obstacles to make major development in the treatment of complex diseases. The understanding of the concepts of complex adaptive systems such as emergence, self-organization, robustness, and nonlinearity is critical for making revolutionary progress. The applications of systems biology and translational bioinformatics may contribute to the development of systems and dynamical medicine with the predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory (P4) features.