Systems Biology

Systems biology is a field of study that aims to understand living things at a system level. In the first half of the 20th century, biology was a field heavily influenced by phenomenalism and natural history. Then, the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick and the resulting development of molecular biology enabled us to talk about biological phenomena in molecular terms. The Human Genome Project, which aims to read all human genetic information, is symbolic of this molecular approach, and it has achieved much success in these early years of the 21st century. It was at this point that we obtained a book listing the components of the human body. This book, while valuable, left many uestions unanswered about the system that those components configured. For example, how were the components connected and what design principal was behind their configuration. Systems biology explores the structure and operational principles of such a system. This field, which Sony CSL began to research in the first half of the 1990s, is becoming a major trend in modern biology.

Although the field of systems biology includes a wide range of research from the level of gene transcription regulation all the way up to ecosystems, there is much research activity at the cell level and tissue/organ level as well as research using microorganisms such as yeast and bacteria. A distinguishing feature of systems biology is its use of knowledge from diverse fields including biology, medicine, information science, physics, and engineering. It has introduced new highly quantitative experimental techniques and developed exhaustive measurement systems, computer simulation methods, and mathematical theories. Here, the storage of huge amounts of data and the processing of empirical data as well as the development of computer simulations to comprehend and predict the behavior of complex systems has been a particular challenge.

There is also much research on the construction of living-system theories based on the feature of "robustness" (the property of maintaining system functions in the face of external or internal disturbances) that can be observed in various aspects of life. We envision the expansion of research that combines these theories with technology for application to medical treatment and biotechnology and for solving energy and environmental problems.

http://www.symbio.jst.go.jp/symbio2/index.html
http://www.systems-biology.org/