Systems biology is a relatively new biological study field that focuses on the systematic study of complex interactions in biological systems, thus using a new perspective (integration instead of reduction) to study them. Particularly from year 2000 onwards, the term is used widely in the biosciences, and in a variety of contexts. Systems biology is the study of the interconnected aspect of molecular, cellular, tissue, whole animal and ecological processes, and comprises mathematical and mechanistic studies of dynamical, mesoscopic, open, spatiotemporally defined, nonlinear, complex systems that are far from thermodynamic equilibrium.
About the Author
Robert A. Meyers obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology and has more than 17 patents, 50 technical papers and 12 books to his name. As Editor-in-Chief he conceived and edited several ambitious multivolume reference works, e.g. the Encyclopedia of Analytical Chemistry (Wiley), the Encyclopedia of Molecular Biology and Molecular Medicine (Wiley-VCH) and the Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology (Academic Press).
