The articles of the present special issue were presented at the XXXIst Seminar of the French-Speaking Society for Theoretical Biology (Societe Francophone de Biologie Theorique, SFBT) held in Autrans (France) from 15 to 18 may 2011. As is the case for most scientific disciplines, the frontiers are moving. New experimental approaches are constantly being developed and older ones are pushed to new limits. Some terms are gaining wider acceptance, like Systems Biology or Complex systems science. But of course the domains covered by these terms are largely overlapping with Theoretical Biology. Biological systems are complex systems, along with social, economic, urban systems and many others. Theoretical ideas developed in one field can often be applied in another. The idea of regulation mechanism and regulatory loop has been put into practice by engineers for centuries (e.g. the famous centrifugal governor used in windmills since the seventeenth century, and rediscovered by Boulton and Watt), applied in physiology (Claude Bernard defined homeostasis in 1865), and theorized in the twentieth century by cyberneticians. It has become since then a pervasive concept with applications in many disciplines. This is a striking example of a powerful theoretical idea which provides a unifying frame. Systems Biology, for its part, has grown with the dissemination of high-throughput technologies (DNA and RNA sequencing, proteomics, interactomics, etc.) and is perceived by many as the sum of these technologies and associated data-processing tools. But the mechanisms at work within cells, organisms and populations can only be understood by building and analyzing multi-scale models, and modeling has indeed become an integral part of Systems Biology.

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法语理论生物学学会第三十一届研讨会论文集

本期特刊的文章发表于 2011 年 5 月 15 日至 18 日在 Autrans（法国）举行的法语理论生物学学会（Societe Francophone de Bilogie Theorique，SFBT）第三十届研讨会。科学学科，前沿在移动。新的实验方法不断被开发，旧的被推到新的极限。一些术语正在获得更广泛的接受，例如系统生物学或复杂系统科学。但当然，这些术语所涵盖的领域在很大程度上与理论生物学重叠。生物系统是复杂的系统，还有社会、经济、城市系统和许多其他系统。在一个领域发展的理论思想通常可以应用于另一个领域。调节机制和调节回路的想法已被工程师实践了几个世纪（例如，自 17 世纪以来著名的风车离心式调速器，被博尔顿和瓦特重新发现），应用于生理学（克劳德·伯纳德于 1865 年定义了稳态） ，并在 20 世纪被控制论者理论化。从那时起，它已成为一个普遍的概念，并在许多学科中得到应用。这是一个强有力的理论思想的显着例子，它提供了一个统一的框架。就系统生物学而言，它随着高通量技术（DNA 和 RNA 测序、蛋白质组学、相互作用组学等）的传播而发展，并被许多人视为这些技术和相关数据处理工具的总和。但是在细胞内起作用的机制，