
Models in biology: ‘accurate descriptions of our pathetic thinking’ (2014) - ehudla
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/12/29
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danhorner
I loved this review. This is systems biology at its best: simple hypotheses
let us build models that explain/predict emergent behaviour. How cool to
explain that a biological oscillator can produce periodically repeating
structures during development!

And the title is spot on: without getting hung up on the details we can look
for structural insights. There's no shame in the "pathetic thinking". Keeping
it simple eliminates the perils of overfitting.

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auvrw
idk.. we really haven't had empirical (e.g. molecular biology) data for as
long as physical (e.g. position of the planets). and even w/ the position of
galaxies or fluid flow, there it's not clear what can and can't be "derived
from fundamental laws."

so I'm not sure this is unique to bio. also, the title grates on me. would
prefer "our incomplete maths" or something.

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jhbadger
True. But it is really worth remembering (as the editorial notes) that math in
biology is nothing new and fields like classical genetics were highly
mathematical before molecular biology existed.

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AnonNo15
There are ongoing efforts to build accurate cellular models, incorporating all
processes and networks to such level that predictions can be made.

There was a rather big breakthrough in 2012, when first bacterial model was
published.

