Systems Biology

The current issue of Wired (13.04) has a brief article that is at the heart of what MeshForum is all about. Cells Are Circuits, Too

[Uri] Alon wrote software that hunts for patterns in the gene-regulation of the E. coli bacterium. What he found was astonishing: Networks with mechanisms straight out of engineering, including amplifiers and pulse generators that would be at home on a circuit board. Alon suspected that these recurring patterns, which he dubbed network motifs, may represent fundamental building blocks of all networks. "Evolution converges on this handful of circuit elements that it uses again and again," he says. He believes that scientists may eventually be able to construct complex networks - genetic or otherwise - out of these basic elements.

As with all discoveries of this type, it is controversial and not completely set in stone.  But the idea that electrical circuits can be mapped into the "circuits" of a cell has some traction.  What about looking at social networks in a similar way?  Are there people who act as amplifiers (mavens)?  I will let people with more expertise play with the analogy.

Uri Alon is at the Weizmann Institute of Science in two departments: Molecular Cell Biology and Physics of Complex Systems.