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A Glossary for Systems Biology
Contents
Index - Glossary -
Recommended Readings
Systems Biology
SYSTEMS BIOLOGY
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Evaluation
Summary
This project was begun as an attempt to compare the meanings that biology and systems theory impart on the most important and/or most heavily used terms for the cooperative field of systems biology. In the course of the project, a glossary of systems biology terms was developed. Each entry provides elementary meanings for a term from a biological as well as a systems theoretical perspective. The two are compared and explained to clarify commonalities and differences. Examples from biology and systems theory together with figures serve to illustrate those sometimes quite abstract definitions. In addition to the glossary pages, terms of special importance are covered in more detail in a special section. Recommended readings provide pointers to relevant literature. An index and a list of literature references complete the project. As a basis for discussion and expansion, the glossary is available online at
Work Flow
Starting with a list of items considered important by people in our group, a literature research provided articles which could give an explanation of these terms from either a biologist's or a systems theorist's perspective.
One of the first realizations during this work was that in many cases the initial list had correctly identified some of the most important terms. Others were added to the list during the research phase, based on the frequency with which they are used or on their ambiguity of meaning.
Expectations and Surprises
As expected, there were some terms which biologists and systems theorists used with mostly identical meanings, and some where meanings were expectedly diverse. There were some surprises, too, as some words previously thought to be quite well defined were revealed as anything but.
Another surprising fact was that on an unexpectedly large number of occasions JANICH and WEINGARTEN [27] were proven correct in their statement that the terms of scientific language are nowhere as clearly defined as one would think or like to see. That has made some definitions an interesting challenge, but one that was clearly worth the effort.
Aims, Hopes and The Future
Due to the way of collecting the terms for this glossary, some terms that people consider essential might have been left out, though hopefully the most important ones were filtered out and covered.
But as already pointed out in the Introduction, this paper was never intended to achieve complete coverage; if it manages to raise interest and heighten sensitivity for the problems inherent in the practice of scientific language it has achieved one of its major goals.
Maybe people will start to suggest other terms that should be clarified; ideally, after seeing what fundamental differences there are sometimes, people will start to use a common reference for their scientific terms and set about defining what they imply by use of a certain term that is not yet contained in that reference base, at least for interdisciplinary ventures like systems biology.
This would be in their own best interest, because it would enable their co-workers to better understand their results, give them better recognition for their work and further the cooperation that is essential for these fields.
As a basis for this and to facilitate discussion and expansion of
the glossary, it will be maintained in an online version (see above
and Section 'Online Version' in the Introduction).
Apart from improving inter-disciplinary understanding, a clearly defined scientific language and the practice of being able to explain one's field of expertise in words understandable for people with a different background would prepare scientists for a task that is becoming ever more important: they have to be able to explain their work to people with no background in their field. This could be the general public, who needs to form an opinion on scientific developments in order decide whether they are acceptable to society as a whole, or even qualify for public financial support (see the current public discussion on genetics and its possible applications). It could also be management personnel from a firm that could profit from the development by making it into a product (like a new drug exploiting new knowledge about metabolic pathways critical for a certain disease). Or it could be politicians who need to decide legislation that reflects society's opinion without unduly hampering scientists in their work. Or any number of other people.
Conclusion
All in all there are a number of reasons that give this project practical relevance.
The project has shown the peculiarities, differences and commonalities of two branches of scientific language. That gives an idea of how big a task it would be to come to a really universal scientific language.
The hope now is that this project will achieve its aim and reduce misunderstandings between people in cooperative projects in systems biology.
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Universität Magdeburg
University of Liège