Systematic: How Systems Biology Is Transforming Modern Medicine

by James R. Valcourt

Overview

A brilliant young scientist introduces us to the fascinating field that is changing our understanding of how the body works and the way we can approach healing.

SYSTEMATIC is the first book to introduce general readers to systems biology, which is improving medical treatments and our understanding of living things. In traditional bottom-up biology, a biologist might spend years studying how a single protein works, but systems biology studies how networks of those proteins work together—how they promote health and how to remedy the situation when the system isn't functioning properly.

Breakthroughs in systems biology became possible only when powerful computer technology enabled researchers to process massive amounts of data to study complete systems, and has led to progress in the study of gene regulation and inheritance, cancer drugs personalized to an individual's genetically unique tumor, insights into how the brain works, and the discovery that the bacteria and other microbes that live in the gut may drive malnutrition and obesity. Systems biology is allowing us to understand more complex phenomena than ever before.

In accessible prose, SYSTEMATIC sheds light not only on how systems within the body work, but also on how research is yielding new kinds of remedies that enhance and harness the body's own defenses.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632860293
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	02/07/2017
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

James R. Valcourt is pursuing a Ph.D. in systems biology at Harvard University. As a former researcher at D. E. Shaw Research in New York City, he used supercomputer simulations to study pharmaceutical drugs. He is a recipient of the quarter-million-dollar Hertz Foundation Graduate Fellowship, and graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with an A.B. in molecular biology, receiving the Pyne Prize. This is his first book and he lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Preface: The Big Idea xi

Part I The Basics

Chapter 1 Seeing the Systems in Biology: Technological Advances Are Letting Scientists Understand Living Things in a New Way 3

Chapter 2 Déjà Vu All Over Again: The Common Patterns and Principles of Natural Systems 9

Chapter 3 Americas Next Top Mathematical Model: Understanding Complex Systems Sometimes Requires Math 23

Chapter 4 Ignoring the Devil in the Details: Robustness, Prediction, Noise, and the General Properties of Systems 41

Part II Cells, Organisms, and Ecosystems

Chapter 5 Beyond Tom Hanks's Nose: Sequencing Technology Is Enabling Scientists to Study All of a Cell's Genes at Once 61

Chapter 6 The Smells of the Father: RNA, DNA Margin Notes, and the Other Missing Parts of the Cellular System 83

Chapter 7 Growing Pains: How Cells and Tissues Coordinate Development, from Egg to Adulthood 99

Chapter 8 No Organism Is an Island: The Interactions between Individuals and Species that Shape Ecosystems 113

Part III Applications

Chapter 9 Build Me a Buttercup: Using Synthetic Biology to Make Diesel Fuel Programmable Cells, and Malaria Medicine 131

Chapter 10 More Than Just 86 Billion Neurons: The Science of the Brain, and How Connections among Neurons Make It Work 153

Chapter 11 Death and Taxes: Aging Is Governed by an Organism-Wide System that We Might Be Able to Manipulate 177

Chapter 12 Your Microbiome and You: The Body Is Host to Trillions of Microbes that Affect Human Health 187

Chapter 13 This Is Your System on Drugs: Tweaking Biological Systems to Produce Better Medical Treatments 205

Epilogue 233

Acknowledgments 235

Notes 237

Index 267

Editorial Reviews

12/12/2016
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. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"An expert overview of a spectacularly burgeoning field." - Kirkus Reviews

"Accessible introduction to systems biology . . . Valcourt delivers a lucid introduction to this ingenious combination of the hard sciences and advanced technology that adopts a holistic view of natural phenomena." - Publishers Weekly

"Odd and interesting." - Booklist

From the Publisher

2016-12-19
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.

Kirkus Reviews