Emerging technologies: Systems biology

The field of systems biology is based on the paradigm that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Through a combination of high-throughput experiments analyzing -omic scale phenomenon and the development of new computational techniques and algorithms, it is now feasible to study biological systems in a way that was previously not possible. During the 232nd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, a session devoted to the emerging technology of Systems Biology was held. A number of talks on a wide variety of subjects covering cell signaling, network regulation and analysis, novel experimental procedures, synthetic biology, and metabolic flux analysis were presented. All of these approaches shared the common theme of using a systems biology approach to aid in the understanding of fundamental biology, with an eye toward applications for the benefit of society.