Systems Biology of the Macrophage Working Group

The systems biology working group will constitute the main activity during Phase II of the Center. The objective in the second phase of the program is the development of a fundamentally new approach to the systematic analysis of biological systems and its application to the study of macrophage biology in health and disease. It is based on the iterative interplay of global, quantitative measurements using proteomic and genomic tools and the stepwise optimization of mathematical models reconciling the data and describing the process under investigation.

This approach represents a departure from the traditional hypothesis-driven method that has served biologists well for decades of productive research. If successful, it will transform biology from an essentially descriptive into a quantitative science in which mathematical models make precise, testable predictions about the behavior of biological processes in response to perturbations and in which emergent systems processes become apparent.