Systems biology is an approach to the science that views biology as an information science, studies biological systems as a whole and their interactions with the environment. This approach, for the reasons described here, has particular power in the search for informative diagnostic biomarkers of diseases because it focuses on the fundamental causes and keys on the identification and understanding of disease- perturbed molecular networks. In this review, we describe some recent developments that have used systems biology to address complex diseases – prion disease and drug induced liver injury- and use these as examples to illustrate the importance of understanding network structure and dynamics. The knowledge of network dynamics through in vitro experimental perturbation and modeling allows us to determine the state of the networks, to identify molecular correlates, and to derive new disease treatment approaches to reverse the pathology or prevent its progress into a more severe state through the manipulation of network states. This general approach, including diagnostics and therapeutics, is becoming known as systems medicine.

中文翻译：

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系统生物学和诊断生物标志物的发现。

系统生物学是一种科学方法，将生物学视为信息科学，从整体上研究生物系统及其与环境的相互作用。由于这里描述的原因，这种方法在寻找信息丰富的疾病诊断生物标志物方面具有特殊的能力，因为它专注于识别和理解疾病扰动分子网络的根本原因和关键。在这篇综述中，我们描述了一些最近的发展，这些发展利用系统生物学来解决复杂的疾病——朊病毒病和药物诱导的肝损伤——并使用这些作为例子来说明理解网络结构和动力学的重要性。通过体外实验扰动和建模获得的网络动力学知识使我们能够确定网络的状态，识别分子相关性，并推导出新的疾病治疗方法，通过操纵网络状态来逆转病理或防止其进展为更严重的状态。这种包括诊断和治疗在内的通用方法被称为系统医学。