23 February 2006

Barriers to progress in systems biology -- Nature [clip]

Emphasizes the importance of standards!


Nature 438, 1079 (22 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/4381079a
Barriers to progress in systems biology
Marvin Cassman 1,a
1. Marvin Cassman lives in San Francisco, California, USA.
a Co-authors are Adam Arkin of the Bioengineering Department, University of California, Berkeley; Fumiaki Katagiri of the Department of Plant Biology, University of Minnesota, St Paul; Douglas Lauffenburger of the Biological Engineering Division, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Frank J. Doyle III of the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara; and Cynthia L. Stokes who is at Entelos, Foster City, California.
For the past half-century, biologists have been uncovering details of countless molecular events. Linking these data to dynamic models requires new software and data standards, argue Marvin Cassman and his colleagues.
The field of systems biology is lurching forwards, propelled by a mixture of faith, hope and even charity. But if it is to become a true discipline, several problems with core infrastructure (data and software) need to be addressed. In our view, they are too critical to be left to ad hoc developments by individual laboratories......
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7071/full/4381079a.html

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