Systems Biology

Systems biology is a newly emerged and multi-disciplinary study field that aims to understand the living organisms as complex, interacted and integrated networks of genes, proteins and biochemical reactions unlike the classical biology that have a reductionist approach. Instead of examining the proteins, genes and metabolic pathways separately like genetics, biology or biochemistry do, this study field accepts a new holistic approach which assumes that all the elements are pieces of a whole and they work by interacting with each other. This study field consists of the integration of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, glycomics, interactomics, fluxomics and bioinformatics. Systems biology quantifies the data gathered from these disciplines by making mathematical models and thus, it creates living system models by using computers and obtains information about the whole system. [Archives Medical Review Journal 2010; 19(1.000): 25-35