Elements of Computational Systems Biology

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COMPUTATIONAL IMAGING AND MODELING FOR SYSTEMS BIOLOGY

Ling-Yun Wu, Xiaobo Zhou, and Stephen T.C. Wong

The Center for Biotechnology and Informatics, The Methodist Hospital Research Institute and Department of Radiology, The Methodist Hospital Weill Cornell Medical College, Houston, Texas, USA

Conventional biological studies focus on one gene or one protein at a time. Life, however, is a complex system that is not subject such a reductionalist approach. In today's postgenomic era, biologists believe that many genes and proteins interact in various fashions and that the deciphering and modeling of interaction among them would help better reveal and understand the mechanisms of living systems [1]. The emerging field of systems biology attempts to investigate such complex biological interaction from a systems viewpoint instead of individual molecules or components. New computational techniques are much needed for this new scientific endeavor, and, in particular, imaging plays an important role of providing objective, repeatable, quantitative phenotyping measures for complementing and correlating with largescale genotyping studies. In this chapter, we will discuss the computational imaging and modeling techniques used in systems biology studies.

Computational techniques in systems biology can be roughly categorized into two broad classes: bioinformatics and bioimage informatics. Bioinformatics in systems biology mainly focuses on the biomarker discovery, including high-throughput ...