All Bio Systems Are Go
The next advances in biology may rely on networked systems research, but will have little to do with computers or telecommunications infrastructure.
Instead, if an influential group of researchers has its way, techniques used to analyze interconnected systems will provide a better understanding of the most complex network of all: the human body.
That's the ambition of scientists in systems biology, a burgeoning field which aims to understand the workings of the nuts and bolts of living organisms through the interactions of the thousands of pieces of DNA, RNA and proteins that network together in each cell of our body.
According to its proponents, systems biology will revolutionize medicine, transforming it from something that is mainly reactive (with an emphasis on treating diseases) into something that is predictive and will eventually prevent diseases getting hold in the first place. Systems biology devotees, like Alfred Gilman, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in medicine, believe the field represents the most promising front in modern medical research.
"Scientists have spent the past 50 years taking apart biological systems piece by piece. Now the future of biological research depends on putting them back together," said Gilman, currently chairman of pharmacology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, at the opening of a systems biology center at the university earlier this year.
"Systems biology will enable predictive and preventive medicine," said Hood. "This will move medicine from its current reactive state to this new mode in the next 10 to 20 years."
The field incorporates analysis of the expression of hundreds of different genes and proteins that give clues into the origins of cancer and other diseases. Systems biologists aim to understand how cells work by seeing biology as a network of systems, consisting of genes written in DNA, which send messages about the cell written in RNA, which provide the recipes for proteins, which do the work of life in our bodies. Understanding the networks will lead to tests that will identify diseases such as cancer, diabetes and AIDS.
Hood and his colleagues have looked at such networks in yeast, comparatively simple organisms with only 6,000 genes. Even in yeast cells, there is a staggering amount of information, with each gene churning out hundreds of chunks of RNA and proteins. The complexity level increases exponentially for humans, with tens of thousands of genes.
Hood's research into prostate cancer determined that the expression patterns of genes and proteins in diseased cells change as the cancer progresses. Such findings could potentially lead to earlier detection of prostate cancer.
Such research requires serious computing power and some radical new technology. Hood, who invented the DNA-sequencing machine and won the Kyoto Prize in 2002, is uniquely qualified for the job.
In particular, Hood is interested in emerging nanotechnologies and microfluidics devices that can collect large amounts of information in short periods of time. Worldwide, much effort is being put into developing a tiny device -- known as a "lab on a chip" -- that with a drop of blood can analyze the expression of hundreds of different genes and proteins. This information will be the key to diagnosing health and predicting future conditions, scientists believe.
Advancements in systems biology require cooperation from scientists in multiple fields, pulling together the expertise of biologists, physicists, computer scientists, chemists, engineers and mathematicians.
"Systems biology is an idea whose time has come," said Hood. "But it is not for everyone. It requires a culture and integration of biology, technology, computation and medicine that is not possible in most institutions."
If systems biology progresses in line with Hood's expectations, one consequence may be the elimination of so-called physics envy suffered by biologists, whose work has traditionally not centered on mathematical expertise. Such progress would also move the digital revolution currently underway in biological sciences to an entirely new level.
To biologists, the words "digital revolution" don't suggest iPods or wireless broadband so much as a cascade of changes that have occurred since the realization that the recipe for life, DNA, is a digital code. That recognition led to the
Hood says such a realization may lead to discoveries that are nothing less than revolutionary.
"My wildest dream is that from a single cell I will be able to delineate the networks of life and from that figure the logic of life for the individual system -- be it a network of proteins, a cell, an organ or an individual organism," he said.