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November 25 Systems Biology and Molecular Biology Systems biology is a new but prosperous area, and molecular biology is a relatively mature and sophisticated disipline. Are they really different? How do they contribute to our understanding of biology?
Nearly 3 years ago, Charles Stevens expressed his opinion by illustrating how these two approaches answer two questions: Why our brain have different areas specific for different functions, such as visual area, motion area and somatosensory area? And why are these areas arranged in the way they are, like V1 is always next to V2 and never next to V3 (V1, V2 and V3 are different areas devoted to vision)? Molecuar biology answered these questions by finding the genes that govern the development of those areas, while systems biology explained that it is optimal for the brain to be a computing machine only when it evolved to different areas and arranged in that way. Chuck thought this is not a good example since the answers provided by these two approaches are not unified. But I think it is not because the example, but because these two approaches answered different part of the questions. To me, systems biology is really answering "why", while molecular biology is answering "how", but these two approaches are complimentary and both are important for us to understand biology.
Ref:
Organize My Knowledge and my mind. |
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