Friam - Systems Biology: Big is Good

Systems biology involves a combination of mathematical modelling and quantitative experimentation. One of the main goals of systems biology is to build mechanistic mathematical models of biological systems to make valuable predictions about their system-level behaviors. Mechanistic models are based on our existing knowledge about the biological system and they generally describe the underlying functional mechanisms or reactions in form of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Development of large-scale mechanistic mathematical models is confronted by issues like parameter estimation and model checking. Ideally mechanistic models should include all known components and relevant phenomena so that it can capture cellular biochemistry, but this kind approach will lead to exponential increase in number of ODEs as well as parameters. Otherwise model can be very simple in terms of mechanistic details, but this kind of oversimplification may not capture real time behavior of biological system. A third alternative is model with intermediate resolution, which generally includes mechanistic detail of key components and activities.

Systems Biology: Big is Good

Systems Biology: Big is Good

Perhaps of interest to listers.....

Systems Biology: Big is Good