Is systems biology a promising approach to resolve controversies in cancer research?.
Soto, Ana M.
Sonnenschein, Carlos.
2012
-
Abstract: At the beginning of the 21st century cancer research has
reached an impasse similar to that experienced in developmental biology in the first
decades of the 20th century when conflicting results and interpretations co-existed
for a long time until these differences were resolved and contradictions were
eliminated. In cancer ... read moreresearch, instead of this healthy "weeding-out" process, there
have been attempts to reach a premature synthesis, while no hypothesis is being
rejected. Systems Biology could help cancer research to overcome this stalemate by
resolving contradictions and identifying spurious data. First, in silico experiments
should allow cancer researchers to be bold and a priori reject sets of data and
hypotheses in order to gain a deeper understanding of how each dataset and each
hypothesis contributes to the overall picture. In turn, this process should generate
novel hypotheses and rules, which could be explored using these in silico approaches.
These activities are significantly less costly and much faster than
"wet-experiments". Consequently, Systems Biology could be advantageously used both as
a heuristic tool to guide "wet-experiments" and to refine hypotheses and test
predictions.
Keywords: Carcinogenesis, Default state, Systems biology, Proliferation, Oncogenes.
Springer Open.read less - Soto, Ana, and Carlos Sonnenschein. "Is systems biology a promising approach to resolve controversies in cancer research?." Cancer Cell International 12, no. 1 (12, 2012): 1-5.
- ID:
- 4x51hw424
- To Cite:
- TARC Citation Guide EndNote
- Usage:
- Detailed Rights
