Editorial

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Systems biology for complex diseases Free
Luonan Chen and Jiarui Wu
Key Laboratory of Systems Biology, SIBS-Novo Nordisk, Translational Research Centre for Pre-Diabetes, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China

Key Laboratory of Systems Biology, Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China
*Correspondence to:E-mail: wujr@sibs.ac.cn,E-mail: lnchen@sibs.ac.cn
J Mol Cell Biol, Volume 4, Issue 3, June 2012, 125-126,  https://doi.org/10.1093/jmcb/mjs022

Systems biology views a living organism as an interacting and dynamical network of genes, proteins, and biochemical reactions which give rise to the function and behavior of that organism, and is considered as a powerfully analytical approach to reveal the essential mechanisms of initiation and progression for complex diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes. The classical bio-medicine based on molecular biology, cell biology, genetics, and other experimental biology has made significant progress against diseases in general. However, the researchers on the bio-medicine area still face the great challenge against the complex diseases, since the methodology of the classical experimental biology is mainly based on studying individual genes and proteins and treating organisms as simple and linear systems, which are not good enough to solve increasingly complicated problems of the diseases. Therefore, the methodologies and techniques of systems biology are strongly demanded for analyzing the molecular mechanisms of the complex diseases and providing new solutions to fight the complex diseases.