The conceptual foundations of Systems Biology. An introduction.

Systems Biology is more than just a sum up of different sciences, given that Systems Biology deals with ‘systems’, and it is concerned with the complex, emergent properties that arise from the relationship between molecules, cells and tissues. Functional properties are not yet in the ‘molecules’, instead they ‘emerge’ from a self-organized process, which shape geometrically the living structure into a system, characterized by hierarchical levels. Interaction among them lead to both top- and down-ward causation. Thus, nowadays Biology is facing a crisis — or is it an opportunity — reminiscent of the state of biology in pre-double-helix time. Time is gone for Biology to “concern itself with the great ‘nonreductionist’ 19th century biological problems that molecular biology left untouched: e.g. the nature of the complex organization of the living matter. Precisely, Systems Biology affords that task.