Systems biology (un)certainties

Scrapie: uncertainties, biology and molecular approaches.

The study of the biology of scrapie in sheep is irretrievably associated with the genetics of the PrP gene in sheep. Control of susceptibility and resistance is so closely linked to certain alleles of the sheep PrP gene that no review on scrapie can avoid PrP genetics. Before the importance of PrP protein was discovered and before the influence of the gene itself on disease incidence was unders...

Managing Uncertainties in Interactive Systems

To adapt users’ input and tasks an interactive system must be able to establish a set of assumptions about users’ profiles and task characteristics, which is often referred as user models. However, to develop a user model an interactive system needs to analyze users’ input and recognize the tasks and the ultimate goals users trying to achieve, which may involve a great deal of uncertainties. In...

Systems biology and the biology of systems.

When I sit down to write an editorial for Physiology, I flatter myself that the two or three people who will ultimately read it want to hear my thoughts on a “big” topic. It strikes me that, within the rarefied realm of academic biology, there few bigger topics, or at least few topics more all encompassing in their scope, than Systems Biology. Perhaps it is the ambiguity inherent in its name th...

Systems biology reveals biology of systems

In the last decades, genomic and postgenomic technologies obtained a great amount of information on molecular bases of cell physiology and organization. In spite of this, the knowledge of cells and living organisms in their entirety, is far from being achieved. In order to deal with biological complexity, Systems Biology uses a new approach to overcome this inadequacy. Despite different definit...

Uncertainties on the spiral staircase: metaethics and the new biology.