Image‐based systems biology

SYSTEMS biology arose from the realization that organisms exhibit the properties of complex systems, in which behaviors of the whole cannot be predicted from analysis of individual components. This led to the demand for models that capture the complex relationships between components and how they give rise to observable behaviors at levels ranging from the subcellular to the ecological. Over the past twenty years, systems biology has largely been focused on acquisition of “omic” scale measurements, development of modeling approaches relevant to this scale, and creation and testing of models for particular systems. Most of this effort has been focused on reconstructing genetic regulatory networks and biochemical or metabolic pathways. Even though microscopy (especially fluorescence microscopy) has become an important tool in high throughput systems approaches, the spatial aspects of networks have been rarely studied. In those cases where they are, it is usually through compartmental models that treat the organization of cells, tissues, and organisms using conceptual subdivisions rather than through statistically and geometrically accurate representations that allow the interplay between networks and spatiotemporal organization to be captured. This Cytometry Part A Special Issue focuses on the growing discipline of Image-based Systems Biology that seeks to take full advantage of the information in images and establishes an essential connective link between experimental and theoretical examination of biological processes at a spatiotemporal level. The discipline generally combines three elements: