Modelling for Regenerative Medicine: Systems Biology Meets Systems Chemistry

Complex systems science is making substantial contributions to the study of biological systems, and has made a substantial contribution to the new field of systems biology. Systems biology focuses on the systematic study of complex interactions in biological systems using an integrative rather than reductionist perspective. One of the goals of systems biology is to study, model, and understand new emergent properties of biological systems from a complex systems perspective [1, 2]. This integrative approach to biology is generating substantial benefits in facilitating study of larger more complicated systems, providing improved understanding of nonlinear system properties, and provides an ability to model systems at appropriate levels of detail where the model is matched to data density and research questions. Various aspects of systems biology have been reviewed recently [3 – 11]. Chemistry has lagged behind most other disciplines in adopting complex systems approaches, possibly because it has largely been a reductionist science, and reductionist approaches have been very successful. Adopting a complementary complex systems approach to chemistry will build on this success to study more complex matter.