MEDIA INQUIRIES
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Systems biology represents a powerful approach for revealing the molecular networks at play in model organisms through iterative cycles of perturbation, measurement, and analysis. However, applying this approach to human systems is inexact, and breaks a traditionally closed loop by introducing model systems that may not accurately capture the spatial and temporal complexity of human biology.
David Fischer, former Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center postdoctoral fellow (2022–2024) and now an assistant professor at the Medical University of Vienna, leads a new perspective paper in Nature Reviews Genetics. Co-authored with Martin Villanueva (MIT) and Schmidt Center collaborators Peter Winter and Alex Shalek (Broad Institute), the paper presents a conceptual framework for studying human systems that accounts for the complexity of biological scales and helps bridge the "translational distance" between discoveries in human cohorts and model-based experimental validation.
Adapted from an update written by Broad Communications.
