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A Glossary for Systems Biology Contents Index - Glossary - A History Systems Biology Notational Conventions Submit - Comment Introduction Systems Biology is an emerging field of biology that aims at systems level understanding of biological processes and networks, such as genetic or metabolic pathways [62]. Even this seemingly straightforward statement has (at least) two interpretations within the group of people engaged in this field. This fact might serve to demonstrate the difficulties of understanding one might be faced when joining this new field of science. In recent years it has become more and more widely recognized that important research challenges in biology may have parallels with those in complex engineering systems [15]. This realization prompted renewed interest in cooperations between biologists and engineers. One of those cooperations is systems biology - at least in one of this term's interpretations. The other sees it as a continuation of molecular biology, with the expressed intention of improving understanding of biological processes by integrating empirical data from all available levels and sources [25]. Both require interdisciplinary cooperation to achieve their goals. This brings together groups with different professional languages who need to be able to understand each other in order to work together. The fact that they use similar terms for different meanings does not help this undertaking. This project was conceived as a glossary for the field of systems biology. Its main aim is to clarify the terms that are important for this field. To achieve this it uses the interpretations biologists and systems theorists accord important terms, assuming that scientists from other fields will be able to use one of them to gain access to the other. After a short historical introduction, Chapter 2 takes a detailed look at some of the most important terms for this field: system, model, modularity and systems biology itself. Chapter 3 is the glossary itself, comprising an alphabetical list of terms with a short definition, a more detailed explanation, references to connected terms, examples and illustrations. Chapter 4 gives an analysis of the project, the difficulties and solutions, and a perspective for the future. To assist interested readers, Chapter 5 provides a list of books and papers which might be useful starting points for beginning research into selected aspects of this field. An Index for easier access and a list of References completes this work.   Contents   Index Glossary Submit Comment

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