Biologists Flirt With Models
The enormous challenge posed by the complexity of biological systems represents a potential intellectual impasse to researchers and threatens to stall future progress in basic biology and healthcare. In recent years, increasing reliance on correlative approaches to biology has failed to resolve this situation. The burgeoning volumes of laboratory data gathered in support of these approaches pose more questions than they answer until such time as they can be assimilated as real knowledge. Modeling can provide the kind of intellectual frameworks needed to transform data into knowledge, yet very few modeling methodologies currently exist that are applicable to the large, complex systems of interest to biologists.