Olaf Wolkenhauer (Dept. of Systems Biology & BioinformaticsUniversity of Rostock, Germany) : “Blind Alleys in the Roadmap for Systems Medicine:From Mechanisms in Cellular Processesto Principles of Tissue Organization”.
La conférence aura lieu à partir de 14h à l’ENS au 45 rue d’Ulm, Paris 75005, salle des Actes.
RÉSUMÉ : Although much has been learned about molecular components and subcellular processes, the integration of data and models across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales remains unchartered territory. Multi-levelness is a hallmark of biological complexity and, in my view the understanding of cellular systems across multiple levels of structural and functional organization is the fundamental problem in systems biology and even more importantly for systems medicine. I shall argue that this requires a rethinking of how of cellular (mal)function occurs and I shall discuss how mathematical modeling could play a role in escaping the cul de sac of reductive approaches (e.g. pathway centric mechanistic modeling). The transition from biochemistry and molecular biology to systems biology was characterized by a focus on networks rather than single molecules, fuelled by the realization that to understand the whole, one must study the whole. The same is true for the transition of systems biology to systems medicine: to understand tissues as a whole, we must study them as such. I believe that a pro-active strategy to search for organizing principles is necessary to avoid the negative side effects of reductionism. The technological advances that have enabled us to “zoom in” will have to be complemented by novel methodologies that allow us to “zoom out”: For systems medicine to succeed, the microscope of molecular and cell biology has to be complemented by a “macroscope” from systems theory. In the seminar, I am criticizing my own work in network-based systems biology in order to identify new research directions for systems medicine.