Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 May 21:1:9.
doi: 10.3389/fphys.2010.00009. eCollection 2010.

What is systems biology?

Rainer Breitling  1
Affiliations

What is systems biology?

Rainer Breitling. Front Physiol. .

Abstract

Systems biology is increasingly popular, but to many biologists it remains unclear what this new discipline actually encompasses. This brief personal perspective starts by outlining the asthetic qualities that motivate systems biologists, discusses which activities do not belong to the core of systems biology, and finally explores the crucial link with synthetic biology. It concludes by attempting to define systems biology as the research endeavor that aims at providing the scientific foundation for successful synthetic biology.

Keywords: computational modeling; synthetic biology; systems biology.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Boogerd F. C., Bruggeman F. J., Hofmeyr J.-H. S., Westerhoff H. V. (2007a). “Afterthoughts as foundations for systems biology,” in Systems Biology: Philosophical Foundations, eds Boogerd F. C., Bruggeman F. J., Hofmeyr J.-H. S., Westerhoff H. V. (Amsterdam: Elsevier; ), 321–336
    1. Boogerd F. C., Bruggeman F. J., Hofmeyr J.-H. S., Westerhoff H. V. (2007b). “Towards philosophical foundations of Systems Biology: introduction,” in Systems Biology: Philosophical Foundations, eds Boogerd F. C., Bruggeman F. J., Hofmeyr J.-H. S., Westerhoff H. V. (Amsterdam: Elsevier; ), 3–20
    1. Bruggeman F. J., Westerhoff H. V., Boogerd F. C. (2002). BioComplexity: a pluralist research strategy is necessary for a mechanistic explanation of the “live” state. Philos. Psychol. 15, 411–44010.1080/0951508021000041996 - DOI
    1. Channon K., Bromley E. H., Woolfson D. N. (2008). Synthetic biology through biomolecular design and engineering. Curr. Opin. Struct. Biol. 18, 491–49810.1016/j.sbi.2008.06.006 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Cornish-Bowden A. (2006). Putting the systems back into systems biology. Perspect. Biol. Med. 49, 475–48910.1353/pbm.2006.0053 - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources