Search PubMedSearch

SEARCH · Search PubMed

Results for “Systems biology”

Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Tungsten vs. Molybdenum in models for biological systems.

Biological systems show a marked preference for molybdenum over tungsten. Studies with methyliminodiacetic acid and L-cysteine have shown that the formation constants of the complexes with Mo(Vi) and W(VI) are very similar. These results imply that these elements would be bound with roughly equal strengths to an apoenzyme or a carrier whether or not these proteins contain a ligating sulfhydryl group. Similarly, transport across a membrane would not be expected to distinguish compounds of these metals providing they are carried in the same oxidation states. However, molybdenum could be distinguished from tungsten through the greater ease of reduction of the compounds of molybdenum.

Chemical Phenomena

SBMLtoOdin and Menelmacar: interactive visualisation of systems biology models for expert and non-expert audiences.

SUMMARY: Computational models in biology can increase our understanding of biological systems, be used to answer research questions, and make predictions. Accessibility and reusability of computational models is limited and often restricted to experts in programming and mathematics. This is due to the need to implement entire models and solvers from the mathematical notation models are normally presented as. Here, we present SBMLtoOdin, an R package that translates differential equation models in SBML format from the BioModels database into executable R code using the R package odin, allowing researchers to easily reuse models. We also present Menelmacar, a web-based application that provides interactive visualisations of these models by solving their differential equations in the browser. This platform allows non-experts to simulate and investigate models using an easy-to-use interface. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: SBMLtoOdin is published under the open source Apache 2.0 licence at https://github.com/bacpop/SBMLtoOdin and can be installed as an R package. The code for the Menelmacar website is published under the MIT License at https://github.com/bacpop/odinviewer, and the website can be found at https://biomodels.bacpop.org/.

Software

Systems biology successes and areas for opportunity in prostate cancer.

Systems biology approaches have been applied to prostate cancer to model how individual cellular and molecular components interact to influence cancer development, progression, and treatment responses. The integration of multi-omic experimental data with computational models has provided insights into the molecular characteristics of prostate cancer and emerging treatment strategies that have the potential to improve patient outcomes. Here, we highlight recent advancements that have emerged from systems modeling in prostate cancer. These include descriptions of the molecular landscape of prostate cancer and how genomic alterations inform computational models of disease progression, how evolutionary processes give rise to mechanisms of therapeutic resistance, and the development of innovative treatment strategies such as adaptive therapy. We also highlight current challenges in prostate cancer that can be addressed through systems biology approaches. These include tumor heterogeneity, poor immunotherapy response, a paucity of experimental model systems, and the ongoing translation of computational models for clinical decision making. Leveraging systems biology approaches has the potential to lead to a better understanding of the disease and better patient outcomes in the treatment of prostate cancer.

Humans

Recognition of metal cations by biological systems.

Recognition of metal cations by biological systems can be compared with the geochemical criteria for isomorphous replacement. Biological systems are more highly selective and much more rapid. Methods of maintaining an optimum concentration, including storage and transfer for the essential trace elements, copper and iron, used in some organisms are in part reproducible by coordination chemists while other features have not been reporduced in models. Poisoning can result from a foreign metal taking part in a reaction irreversibly so that the recognition site or molecule is not released. For major nutrients, sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium, there are similarities to the trace metals in selective uptake but differences qualitatively and quantitatively in biological activity. Compounds selective for potassium replace all the solvation sphere with a symmetrical arrangement of oxygen atoms; those selective for sodium give an asymmetrical environment with retention of a solvent molecule. Experiments with naturally occurring antibiotics and synthetic model compounds have shown that flexibility is an important feature of selectivity and that for transfer or carrier properties there is an optimum (as opposed to a maximum) metal-ligand stability constant. Thallium is taken up instead of potassium and will activate some enzymes; it is suggested that the poisonous characteristics arise because the thallium ion may bind more strongly than potassium to part of a site and then fail to bind additional atoms as required for the biological activity. Criteria for the design of selective complexing agents are given with indications of those which might transfer more than one metal at once.

Animals

Physical plasma in biological solids: a possible mechanism for resonant interactions between low intensity microwaves and biological systems.

Observed semiconductor properties of biological material in vitro indicate possible involvement of semiconduction in biological processes. Since in inorganic semiconductors solid-state plasma occurs, it is hypothesized that in organic semiconductors solid-state plasma similarly occurs. Some results of experimental investigation of resonant effects of microwaves in biological systems are considered in the light of that hypothesis. The conditions necessary for the existence of physical plasma in biological solid structures are discussed, and certain parameters of physical plasma in these structures are evaluated. Its is proposed that microwave radiation may support or damp plasma oscillations, thereby stimulating or suppressing biological functions.

Biology

How do biological systems discriminate among physically similar ions?

This paper reviews the history of understanding how biological systems can discriminate so strikingly among physically similar ions, especially alkali cations. Appreciation of qualitative regularities ("permitted sequences") and quantitative regularities ("selectivity isotherms") in ion selectivity grew first from studies of ion exchangers and glass electrodes, then of biological systems such as enzymes and cell membranes, and most recently of lipid bilayers doped with model pores and carriers. Discrimination of ions depends on both electrostatic and steric forces. "Black-box" studies on intact biological membranes have in some cases yielded molecular clues to the structure of the actual biological pores and carriers. Major current problems involve the extraction of these molecules; how to do it, what to do when it is achieved, and how (and if) it is relevant to the central problems of membrane function. Further advances are expected soon from studies of rate barriers within membranes, of voltage-dependent ("excitable") conducting channels, and of increasingly complex model systems and biological membranes.

Adenosine Triphosphatases

[Nonequilibrium distribution as a feature of biological systems].

It is suggested that the amount of energy extracted by a dissipative biological system from macroergic compounds depends on the energetic state of the system. The non-linear character of this relationship with the maximum in intermediate phases and presence of the upper limit of energetic states in the system with an energy increase cause a decrease of population of intermediate levels and an increase of the upper and lower levels. The antientropic distribution is presented as a principal thermodynamic peculiarity of biological systems.

Macromolecular Substances

Adapting systems biology to address the complexity of human disease in the single-cell era.

Systems biology aims to achieve holistic insights into the molecular workings of cellular systems through iterative loops of measurement, analysis and perturbation. This framework has had remarkable success in unicellular model organisms, and recent experimental and computational advances - from single-cell and spatial profiling to CRISPR genome editing and machine learning - have raised the exciting possibility of leveraging such strategies to prevent, diagnose and treat human diseases. However, adapting systems-inspired approaches to dissect human disease complexity is challenging, given that discrepancies between the biological features of human tissues and the experimental models typically used to probe function (which we term 'translational distance') can confound insight. Here we review how samples, measurements and analyses can be contextualized within overall multiscale human disease processes to mitigate data and representation gaps. We then examine ways to bridge the translational distance between systems-inspired human discovery loops and model system validation loops to empower precision interventions in the era of single-cell genomics.

Humans

Kinetics of a bacterial culture growth: validity of the affinity rule in biological systems.

The kinetic study of a process is usually performed by measuring a convenient intensive property, P, as a function of time. The "affinity rule" states that, when a given process takes place under different external constraints (e.g., different temperatures, pressures, pH values, etc.), the various P versus time curves are related by an affinity transformation parallel to the time axis: in other words the P versus log time curves are parallel and can be superimposed by translation. The validity of the rule has been extensively tested in chemical and physiochemical processes, but there is no evidence as yet that it extends to biological systems. The present paper shows that the rule is indeed valid for the kinetics of growth of an Escherichia coli culture at various temperatures and pH values. More extended experiments are necessary to prove or disprove the general validity of the rule in biological systems, but its practical interest is evident: whenever it is valid it will be possible, from a very small number of measurements, to predict the complete behavior of the system in a number of various external conditions

Aerobiosis

[Regulation processes in biological systems. II. Role of compartmentation and of organized multienzyme systems].

The picture, emerging from the experimental results on the physical association of multienzyme systems, is that the true physiological significance of the aggregated state can be understood only if it is correlated to the structural and functional integration of the cellular metabolic framework as a whole. The enzyme clusters exhibit two distinct functional properties. The first is the spatial translocation of intermediate substrates, the effect of which may be viewed as metabolic "channelling" or "vectorial catalysis" if the enzyme clusters are arrayed in some manner in the cell. The second is the coordinate regulation which represents an efficient and economical mean of controlling two or more functionally related enzymes. The common element to these two properties is the spatial character, which is potentially present in the function and the regulation of the intermediary metabolism. The biological systems, and metabolism in particular, exhibit both stability and variability; the latter sometimes assumes the character of periodicity. Whether the oscillations have a definite importance at the level of the intermediary metabolism itself, may well be questioned; the oscillatory faculties may rather serve as elements to be used in more complex functions of the biological systems. A thorough understanding of the role of clustered multienzyme systems and of the oscillatory phenomena in cellular metabolism demands a clearer physicochemical picture of the dynamic state of the living cell than we have at present. For this reason some of the generalizations derived from in vitro studies of single, isolated enzyme activities are not justified.

Adenosine Triphosphate

[Investigation of the microstructure of biological systems by triplet label].

A method for investigating the microstruct and dynamics of biological systems by means of triplet-excited molecules is suggested. The method is based on the phenomenon of triplet excitation disactivation by exchange-resonance triplet-triplet energy transfer to the acceptor or by intercombination conversion induced by interaction of an excited molecule with a paramagnetic center. The disactivation efficiency was measured by registrating the phosphorescense decay kinetics. The interaction of the triplet label eosin isothiocyanate, covalently coupled with albumine, lysozyme, sarcoplasmic reticulum membrane and Ca-Mg-dependent sarcoplasmic reticulum ATPase, with O2, the stable nitroxide radicals and ions of Mn2+ was investigated to analyse the potentialities of this method. As a model system the eosin phosphorescence quenching by the same quenchers in glycerine-aguaous solutions was studied. The method permits to investigate the microviscosity and microstructure of biological objects in the label attached region on interaction of the label with a sound-quencher with constants being 10(4) divided by 10(9) M-1 sec-1 and to measure the lateral diffusion of molecules in highly viscosity media (10 divided by 10(5) santypuas).

Adenosine Triphosphatases

RBC-GEM: A genome-scale metabolic model for systems biology of the human red blood cell.

Advancements with cost-effective, high-throughput omics technologies have had a transformative effect on both fundamental and translational research in the medical sciences. These advancements have facilitated a departure from the traditional view of human red blood cells (RBCs) as mere carriers of hemoglobin, devoid of significant biological complexity. Over the past decade, proteomic analyses have identified a growing number of different proteins present within RBCs, enabling systems biology analysis of their physiological functions. Here, we introduce RBC-GEM, one of the most comprehensive, curated genome-scale metabolic reconstructions of a specific human cell type to-date. It was developed through meta-analysis of proteomic data from 29 studies published over the past two decades resulting in an RBC proteome composed of more than 4,600 distinct proteins. Through workflow-guided manual curation, we have compiled the metabolic reactions carried out by this proteome to form a genome-scale metabolic model (GEM) of the RBC. RBC-GEM is hosted on a version-controlled GitHub repository, ensuring adherence to the standardized protocols for metabolic reconstruction quality control and data stewardship principles. RBC-GEM represents a metabolic network is a consisting of 820 genes encoding proteins acting on 1,685 unique metabolites through 2,723 biochemical reactions: a 740% size expansion over its predecessor. We demonstrated the utility of RBC-GEM by creating context-specific proteome-constrained models derived from proteomic data of stored RBCs for 616 blood donors, and classified reactions based on their simulated abundance dependence. This reconstruction as an up-to-date curated GEM can be used for contextualization of data and for the construction of a computational whole-cell models of the human RBC.

Humans

Uncovering ShuangZi Powder's Anti-Ovarian Cancer Mechanism: A Systems Biology and Experimental Approach.

INTRODUCTION: This study investigated the anti-ovarian cancer (OC) effects of Shuangzi Powder (SZP) and its regulatory impact on the tumor microenvironment. METHOD: This study employed systems biology approaches, integrating molecular docking and experimental validation, to explore the pharmacological mechanisms of SZP in OC treatment. To identify potential bioactive compounds and target genes of SZP, network pharmacology, protein- protein interaction network analysis,.Gene Ontology (GO) analysis, and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment were conducted. RESULTS: Among the 11 bioactive ingredients identified in SZP, 1,767 potential therapeutic targets were predicted, while 2,637 differentially expressed genes were found to be associated with OC. KEGG pathway analysis revealed significant enrichment in pathways related to cancer, apoptosis, the PI3K-Akt signaling pathway, and the PD-L1/PD-1 checkpoint pathway. Treatment of A2780 cells with β,β-Dimethylacrylshikonin (DMAS) inhibited cell viability, migration, and invasion. Moreover, DMAS downregulated the expression of cell cycle- and apoptosis-related genes (CCNB1, CHEK1, CCNE1, and PARP1) and upregulated the immune checkpoint gene PD-L1. DISCUSSION: These findings indicate that multiple components, targets, and pathways are involved in OC treatment by SZP. CONCLUSION: DMAS, one of the bioactive ingredients of SZP, was predicted and preliminarily validated to exert inhibitory effects on OC cells, mainly through the regulation of the cell cycle, apoptosis, and immune response, as demonstrated by molecular docking and experimental analyses.

Ovarian Neoplasms

Integrating explainable artificial intelligence with multiomics systems biology and electronic health record data mining for personalized drug repurposing in Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by region- and patient-specific molecular heterogeneity, which hinders therapeutic design. In this study, we introduce PRISM-ML (PRecision-medicine using Interpretable Systems and Multiomics with Machine Learning), an open-source integrated analysis pipeline that combines interpretable machine learning with systems biology and electronic health records data mining to elucidate the molecular diversity of AD and predict promising drug repurposing opportunities. First, we integrated and harmonized transcriptomic (bulk RNA-seq) and genomic (genome-wide association study) data from 2105 brain samples, each with matched data from the same individual (1363 AD patients, 742 controls; 9 tissues), sourced from three independent studies. Random forest classifiers with SHapley Additive exPlanations identified patient-specific biomarkers; unsupervised clustering resolved 36 molecularly distinct subtissues (defined as clusters of samples within a brain tissue that share a specific expression pattern); and gene-gene coexpression networks prioritized 262 high-centrality bottleneck genes as putative regulators of dysregulated pathways. Next, knowledge graph-based drug repurposing predicted six Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs that simultaneously target multiple bottleneck genes and multiple AD-relevant pathways. Notably, in a large US de-identified insurance-claims database (n&#x2009;=&#x2009;364&#xa0;733), exposure to promethazine, one of the candidate drugs, was associated with a 57%-62% lower incidence of AD versus an active antihistamine comparator (adjusted hazard ratio 0.38; inverse-probability weighted 0.43; both P&#x2009;<&#x2009;.001), providing real-world support for its repurposing potential. In summary, PRISM-ML, as an explainable multiomics analysis pipeline, is readily transferable to other complex diseases, advancing precision medicine.

Alzheimer Disease

[Measurement of the magnetic relaxation of water molecules in biological systems by the impulse NMR technic with calculation of their volume].

Impulse sequences are presented for selective by biological system volume measurements of the times of spin--spin, spin--lattice relaxation of water molecules by means of NMR spin echo. Selectivity of the programs is based on the fact that in the presence of magnetic field impulse gradient diffusion quenching of the echo differs for water molecules limited or unlimited in their diffusion displacement by some barriers (membranes) and it also differs for molecules limited in compartments of different size. Selective measurement of the times of spin--spin relaxation (T2) of water in intracellular structures of the yeast cells gave the value 24.4 msec, which is 1.3 times lower than the specimen volume measured by standard method.

Intracellular Membranes

Evolution and applications of genome-scale metabolic models in yeast systems biology studies.

Genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs) can be used to simulate the metabolic network of an organism in a systematic and holistic way. Different yeast species, including Saccharomyces cerevisiae, have emerged as powerful cell factories for bioproduction. Recently, with the dedicated efforts from the scientific community, significant progress has been made in the development of yeast GEMs. Numerous versions of yeast GEMs and the derived multiscale models have been released, facilitating integrative omics analysis and rational strain design for different types of yeast cell factories. These advancements reflected the evolution and maturation of yeast GEMs together with a model ecosystem around them. This review will summarize the development and expansion of yeast GEMs and discuss their applications in yeast systems biology studies. It is anticipated that yeast GEMs will continue to play an increasingly important role in pioneering yeast physiological and metabolic studies in coming years.

Systems Biology

[Experimental investigations on ultraweak photonemission form biological systems (author's transl)].

Measurements on untreated yeast cells, potato- and cucumber seedlings have confirmed the existence of photon emission from biological systems known as "ultraweak luminescence". The intensity is of the order of 10(2) counts per second, and the spectral distrubtion shows a maximum near 550 nm. The dependence of th photon emission on certain chemicals has been investigated. Some chemicals, as for instance acetone, intensify the photon emission from cucumber seedlings without essential change of the spectral distribution. On the other hand, NaCl leads to a shift to the red region of the spectrum. The treatment of EAT-cells by 4-Hydroperoxycyclofosfamide involves a nonlinear enhancement of the intensity with increasing concentration. There are some indications that collective interactions of the system are more appropriate than simple chemiluminescence reactions.

Candida

Integrative quantum and systems biology of cancer: From molecular fluctuations to ecological outcomes.

This review treats cancer as a multiscale adaptive system, asks what the framework must predict to be worth adopting, and separates at each scale what the evidence establishes from what is proposed. It is an expert narrative synthesis, not a systematic review, and states the limits of that design. Proton transfer and tautomeric shifts contribute to spontaneous mispairing but do not license claims of directed or non-random mutation: replication timing, three-dimensional chromatin organization, sequence context and known mutagenic processes explain most mutational heterogeneity, leaving any quantum contribution as a residual against that baseline. The Waddington quasi-potential is bounded: outside detailed balance the dynamics are not gradient-derivable and require a probability-flux term. Hysteresis, rate-limited bimodality and return to state after perturbation distinguish an attractor from a transcriptomic cluster. Single-cell karyotype and live-imaging evidence supports whole-genome doubling as an unstable intermediate of heterogeneous origin and context-dependent consequence, not a uniform adaptive strategy. Systems and synthetic biology, virtual cells and digital twins are assessed against benchmarks, not promise. Tissue-scale ecology is reported with the spatial measurements now quantifying it, including evidence that stromal niche construction is not uniformly tumor-supporting. RNA modification is a layer in its own right, showing that the interpretation of a regulatory signal, not its magnitude, is biologically decisive. A dedicated section states the framework's commitments, the observable and evidence at each scale, and what would falsify them, asking what this adds to somatic mutation theory with clonal evolution and plasticity.

Neoplasms