Summary: CURRENT PERSPECTIVE ESSAY
SPECIAL SERIES ON LARGE-SCALE BIOLOGY
Network Inference, Analysis, and Modeling in Systems Biology
Cells use signaling and regulatory pathways connecting numer-
ous constituents, such as DNA, RNA, proteins, and small mol-
ecules, to coordinate multiple functions, allowing them to adapt
to changing environments. High-throughput experimental meth-
ods enable the measurement of expression levels for thousands
of genes and the determination of thousands of protein­protein
or protein­DNA interactions. It is increasingly recognized that
theoretical methods, such as statistical inference, graph anal-
ysis, and dynamic modeling, are needed to make sense of this
abundance of information. This perspective argues that theo-
retical methods and models are most useful if they lead to novel
biological predictions and reviews biological predictions arising
from three systems biology topics: graph inference (i.e., recon-
structing the network of interactions among a set of biological
entities), graph analysis (i.e., mining the information content of
the network), and dynamic network modeling (i.e., connecting
the interaction network to the dynamic behavior of the system).

Source: Albert, Réka - Departments of Biology & Physics, Pennsylvania State University

Collections: Biology and Medicine