Interactome Networks

Despite the considerable success of molecular biology to understand diseases such as cancer, many fundamental questions remain unanswered. Most importantly, since the majority of gene products in the cell mediate their function together with other gene products, biological processes should be considered as complex networks of interconnected components. In other words, for any normal biological process, or any disease mechanism, such as cancer, one might consider a “systems approach” in which the behavior and function of such networks are studied as a whole, in addition to studying some of its components individually. The draft of the human genome sequence is likely to help such a transition from molecular biology to systems biology.