Studying complex biological systems using multifactorial perturbation

High-throughput genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics have the potential to identify the functional consequences of induced and natural genetic variation. Surprisingly, the experiments of most genomics researchers still mainly involve perturbing a biological system of interest by modifying either one factor or one gene at a time. By contrast, this article argues that multifactorial experimentation would allow the study of many more biologically relevant questions in parallel at the same or lower cost.