Towards a theory of biological robustness
By Hiroaki Kitano. Molecular Systems Biology, 2007
825 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Mol Syst Biol. 3: 137 Robustness is one of the fundamental characteristics of biological systems. Numerous reports have been published on how robustness is involved in various biological processes and on mechanisms that give rise to robustness in living systems (Savageau, 1985a, 1985b, 1998; Barkai and Leibler, 1997; Alon et al , 1999; von Dassow et al , 2000; Bhalla and Iyengar, 2001; Csete and Doyle, 2002, 2004; Kitano et al , 2004, 2004a, 2004b; Stelling et al , 2004; Kitano and Oda, 2006; Kitano, 2007a). With increasing interest in systems biology, properties at the system level such as robustness have attracted serious scientific research. Nevertheless, a mathematical foundation that provides a unified perspective on robustness is yet to be established. For systems biology to mature into a solid scientific discipline, there must be a solid theoretical and methodological foundation. Often, systems biology is equated with computer simulation of cells and organs. Although computer simulation is a powerful technique for clarifying the complex dynamics of biological systems, it is also a useful tool for exploring the foundation of biological systems. While investigation on the dynamic properties of specific aspects of organisms is scientifically significant and can be widely applied, it is a study on specific instances of design within a design space that is shaped by fundamental principles, structural, environmental, and evolutionary constraints. The scientific goal of systems biology is not merely to create precision models of cells and organs, but also to discover fundamental and structural principles behind biological systems that define the possible design space of life (Figure 1). The value of understanding fundamental and structural theories is that they provide deeper insights into the governing principles that complex evolvable systems including biological …
Subfields: Molecular Biology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9894275d300ad6b633d2cdd4bafaf5827445b8a0
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Molecular Biology
Citations in the corpus
- Systems medicine: the future of medical genomics and healthcare (2009, background): “Network biology is revealing the existence of modular structures in biological networks that may explain the robustness of biological systems when they are exposed to changing environments [90-93].”
- Resilience and robustness in policy design: a critical appraisal (2017, background): “Put in other words, a ‘system is robust as long as it maintains functionality, even if it transits through a new steady state or if instability actually helps the system to cope with perturbations’ (Kitano 2007, p. 1).”
- Flexible and multistable pattern generation by evolving constrained plastic neurocontrollers (2011, background): “Therefore, the best CCNS controller clearly demonstrates the property of homeostasis as defined in the background section (Kitano, 2007).”
- Transcriptional Regulatory Networks in Saccharomyces cerevisiae (2009, background): “It refers to the systems ability to maintain its functions against internal and external perturbations [34].”
- Agent-based models in translational systems biology (2009, background): “44,45 One example of this can be seen in an ABM of bilayer membrane structure and behavior.”
- Network pharmacology: the next paradigm in drug discovery. (2008, background): “This robustness of phenotype can be understood in terms of redundant functions and alternative compensatory signaling route”
- Biologicalisation: Biological transformation in manufacturing (2018, background): “It is important to realise that robustness is concerned with maintaining functions of a system rather than system states, which distinguishes robustness from stability” [Kitano, 2007].”