Biotech pioneer Leroy Hood explains how systems biology will impact medicine.

In the 1980s, Leroy Hood was something of a maverick. At a time when most biologists wanted nothing to do with the tools and methods of engineering, Hood developed a series of tools that have revolutionized biological science. As a professor at Caltech, he developed four fundamental, automated tools that have helped make possible the comprehensive study of the human genome: a DNA sequencer, a DNA synthesizer, a protein synthesizer, and a protein sequencer. But the Caltech administration wasn't interested in commercializing these technologies, so Hood cofounded a company that became Applied Biosystems. (He has also helped found several additional biotech companies, including Amgen.)

In 2000, after a stint at the University of Washington, he started up the Seattle-based Institute for Systems Biology, where he is president. Traditional biology tends to study one gene or protein or process at a time. Systems biology takes a cue from engineering and treats organisms as complex systems. Systems biologists, often using computer models, try to understand how genes, proteins, cells, and tissues interact to create complex organisms. By mapping out, rather than reducing, biological complexity, systems biologists hope to reach a new understanding of the fundamental processes of life, from embryonic development to normal metabolism to the emergence of diseases like cancer.  Read More...