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comment by thundara
thundara  ·  3188 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Scientists of hubski, what science do you science?

Proteomics / systems biology, trying to go from 0 to neuro right now, have done X-ray crystallography / structural biology in the past





Pieareround  ·  3188 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Last spring, I took a course in developmental psychobiology, and systems biology was interspersed throughout. Definitely an interesting way to conceptualize the interconnections between various levels of biological study. I recall a demonstration my professor used to explain what I believe he called "partially dependent systems."

Here's the demonstration:

According to the description of the video, the metronomes become able to influence each other into synchronization when they are sitting on the cans. This is because being on the cans makes the activity of each metronome - an independent system of sorts - partially dependent on the activity of the others. The on-cans configuration is supposed to be analogous to certain biological systems. For example, the endocrine system and the nervous system in the human body.

In your opinion, am I understanding this correctly?

thundara  ·  3187 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Somewhat, though I think peoples' definitions of "systems biology" tends to share the same idea of analyzing many moving parts, but I've heard the term used to describe everything from tiny molecular systems to populations of buffalo.

My interests tend to stay around the size of protein / cellular where you tend to look at transcriptional networks, phosphorylation pathways, etc. You still see similar analysis of feedback / feed-forward loops and discussion of how cells are able to optimally filter input signals / evolve systems to do so.