Title: Biological Networks and Some of Their Developments
Abstract: The presentation of the DNA double helix model led to that the understanding of biology got into the molecular level. Then the era of molecular biology began. This era sustained about half century. Now, the researches of biology are at the post-genomic era, in which the biological systems are studied at the ensemble- or system-level and the systems biology emerges. Biological systems are complex systems. One of the notable remarks of complex systems is that agents in the system interact closely between each other. The complex network is one of the approaches to describe the complex systems. The agents and their interactions in the complex systems can be represented as the nodes and links in the networks respectively. So the complex networks can be used to analyze the biological systems. For example, in the metabolic process, the substrates and their interaction can be described by a network. The researches of biological networks have a history about one decade. A brief review of the researches of the biological networks was given. Some of their developments were introduced, including the metabolic networks and the large-scale organization, scale-free topology, hierarchical modular structure, the robustness of networks, self-similarity and fractal structure, etc.
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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