Dear Xueshan,It is a very good question. In my practical experience, the "omic" disciplines provide a lot of data, usually compiled into data-bases, so that one can obtain many "lists of parts" about most processes and cellular subsystems. But in many cases that info is insufficient. For instance I am working in the signaling system of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and, if I go to the "tuberculist" data base, I can obtain more than two hundred transcriptional factors presumably related to signaling functions (belonging either to the "one, two or three-component systems"), however the true signaling function of each component is very difficult to obtain (a painful task one-by-one, searching at the literature). Thus I have to spent a lot of time to get a systemic or general approach, and even more if I want to build some models...Is the creation of Systems Biology related to Genomics, Proteomics, Transcriptomics, Glycomics, and many many other "-mics"? If so, what is the relationship between the Systems Biology and information from the x-mics angle? Systems Biology is like ecology, that has to deal with the integration of a lot of partial specialized information from many other disciplines. What is your opinion about Leroy E. Hood' words: "Biology Is an Informational Science". I think (it is a very personal opinion!, obviously influenced by Pedro) that the leaders of Bioinformatic and Systems Biology (Gilbert, Hood, Brenner, Kitano, etc.) are not very serious in that type of statements. What they mean is that biology and molecular biology are becoming not really information sciences but intensive "computer science users". Usually one doesn´t find very deep theoretical reflexion in these guys although their works are very good from the technical point of view. Neurobiology is not my turf. Raquel will answer you very soon about that.Are there any difference between transmitter in Neuroscience and hormone in Endocrinology from the viewpoint of information transmission and communication ? By the way, do you know anyone working on Systems Biology in your University? Nice to talk to you! Jorge --
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