A cluster of cerebellar granule cells grown in culture WELLCOME IMAGES
Science is all about prediction. Its power lies in the ability to make highly specific forecasts about the world. The traditional “hard” sciences, such as chemistry and physics, use mathematics as the basis of their predictive power. Biology sometimes uses math to predict small-scale phenomena, but the complexity of cells, tissues, and organisms does not lend itself to easy capture by equations.
Systems biologists have been struggling to develop new mathematical and computational approaches to begin moving biology from a mostly descriptive to a predictive science. To be most useful, these models need to tell us not only why different types of cells can behave in much the same way, but also why seemingly identical cells can behave so differently.
Cell biologists typically want to ...
