Systematic

December 12, 2016
Amazing phenomena occur when cells work together, writes Valcourt in this accessible introduction to systems biology, a field with a distinguished history that took off at the beginning of the 21st century. Combining engineering, mathematics, and advances in computing technology, scientists are learning how the innumerable elements in a complex organism work in concert. Valcourt offers as an example the seemingly miraculous workings of the human brain. A single brain cell simply fires an electric pulse, but 86 billion connected brain cells enable a person to think, feel, imagine, and wonder. Systems biologists are studying that kind of leap from simple action to complex behavior. Valcourt visits laboratories where researchers are examining the mechanism of aging, the specific genetic errors that make a cell malignant, why useful drugs produce nasty side-effects, and why the immune system overreacts (provoking allergies) or underreacts (ignoring cancers). Understanding these processes will transform human lives, but despite the book’s title, at present the field’s triumphs are largely confined to the laboratory; as Valcourt admits, many ongoing attempts to unlock these secrets will fizzle. Still, systems biologists seem on the verge of achieving great things, and Valcourt delivers a lucid introduction to this ingenious combination of the hard sciences and advanced technology that adopts a holistic view of natural phenomena.

January 1, 2017
Exploration of "how understanding neural systems is helping us unravel some of the biggest mysteries in science."One cannot fully comprehend the workings of an ant colony by studying a single ant, and a human is far more than a collection of cells and chemical reactions. This is old news to scientists, but new ways of thinking, combined with vast computing power, have given them a powerful tool, systems biology, to analyze these complex relationships. Enthusiastic and young--he is currently pursuing a doctorate in biology at Harvard--Valcourt delivers an expert overview of a spectacularly burgeoning field where, for example, a team of scientists spent 12 years and $3 billion sequencing the human genome in 2003. By 2016, a single scientist could do the same in a day for roughly $1,000. Philosophers and nonscientists routinely proclaim the superiority of the "big picture," and Valcourt agrees without downplaying the difficulties. Isolated phenomena, he writes, "don't fit together quite as easily as Lego blocks, but we are starting to realize that we can use them to construct biological systems that have the potential to produce medicines, sense environmental toxins, and improve manufacturing processes." Mixing interviews, anecdotes, and lucid explanations, the author describes how dividing fertilized cells, at first identical, learn how to become a complete organism. He shares the universal amazement at how organs such as the brain develop seemingly magical (i.e., "emergent") properties absent from their individual components, and he concludes that researchers and their supercomputers will transform lives, cure diseases, design drugs and perhaps living things from scratch, and efficiently correct a defective genome in an adult. Readers will notice that, except for a few dramatic anecdotes, none of Valcourt's marvels is currently happening, but he makes a convincing case that they are viable and just around the corner.

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