Hiroaki Kitano

Understanding the fundamental principles of life requires understanding of living systems as systems. While this should be well grounded in an understanding at the molecular level, and the rapid progress in molecular biology has revealed much, a system-level understanding can shed light on some of the deeper principles of life. I have proposed ''Systems Biology'' that aims at a system-level understanding of living systems, and presently devote myself to this research. Particular focus is put on the biological theory of robustness that entails understanding the basic principles of robustness in biological systems, the trade offs present in robust yet fragile systems, and the evolvability of robust systems. Further research is now being embarked on systems biology concerning cancer and other major diseases, and in the development of artificial systems with highly robust properties.

Kitano, H. (2002) Systems biology: a brief overview, Science, March, 1; 295(5560):1662-4.
Kitano, H. (2002) Computational systems biology, Nature, Nov. 14;420(6912):206-10.