Midterm 1 Flashcards
What is the energy distribution system?
(Energy distributed between everything) It emphasizes a systems biology approach example the involvement of many systems (cardiovascular, muscular etc.)
What is systems biology?
Is the systematic study of complex interactions in biological systems
What is the main goal of systems biology?
Is to better understand the entirety of the processes that happen in a biological system
What is the opposite of systems biology called?
Reductionist paradigm where organizational levels tend to be isolated (reduction reducing the amount looking at)
What does systems biology consider?
It considers interactions and dynamics; complexity!
How would one study using systems biology?
Studies biological systems by putting an emphasis on biological, genetics and chemicals monitoring the genes seeing what happens with all and making mathematical models that can show how the system reacts to varying disruptions
What are emergent properties?
Properties of an entire system (or organism) that are not evident from examining the individual components
Examples: are personalities multiple systems would have to be monitored to formulate one’s personality
(emerging from looking at multiple things, putting things together cause emerging to happen)
What does systems biology incorporate?
From genes to proteins to tissues to organ systems
What is bioinformatics? And what is its purpose?
To predict outcomes or responses in a living system and involves mathematical modelling (what they think will happen to the whole body and systems if one has drugs for ex)
What are examples of the omics…
Genomics, Proteomics, Metabolics
What is genomics?
The study of an organisms complete set of DNA
What is proteomics?
Study of the set of all proteins produced within a biological system typically could be an organ, an organ system, or the entire organism
What is metabolics?
Study of metabolites within a unit; eg cell, tissue, organ, organism (how people metabolize things differently)
What is the main difference between reduction vs integration approaches?
Systems biology is about putting together rather then taking apart, integrating all parts instead of reduction
Reduction method is bad because?
It offers no concepts to understand how system properties emerge example personality
Why are isolated models sometimes good? (molecules, cells, organs, or tissue)
- Have great control over the experimental conditions
- Can clear up certain mechanisms
What are the positives and negatives for the integrated whole-body approach?
Bad: There is less control over the variables; less mechanistic cant look at everything at once in detail
Good: more applicable to the real world
What is an example of a reductionist approach?
- Stimulation of fat by using leptin to show how it burns fat well; bad because it doesnt take into account the other hormones at play; shows its not effective
- Type 2 diabetes and regulation of blood glucose blood taken only at a certain time; location only a single site; did someone eat something that increased or decreased the amount of sugar in blood
What is an example of a integrated approach?
- What limits maximal oxygen uptake (using the whole body exercise cycling and running, rather then using a single leg extension)
What are antioxidants and how are they helpful?
Are molecules that protect your body against damage from reactive oxygen species (ROS) in your body
- ROS can cause harm if levels become too high in the body
- Linked to aging and multiple diseases
Should one take antioxidants?
Yes and no because it can prevent some of the beneficial cellular adaptations to exercise training
What does it mean when P is less than 0.05? What does n mean?
BIG CHANGE; sample size number of people or rats
Reductionist approach vs systems-oriented perspective differences
Reductionism:
- Conditions where one or few components are responsible for the overall behaviour of the system
- Acute, simple diseases
- Eg uti
- Disregards component-component interactions and dynamics
Systems-oriented Perspective:
- Conditions where interactions between components are responsible for the overall behaviour of the system
- Chronic, complex diseases
- Ex. diabetes
- Costly in resources and time
Biological processes are…
complex and sometimes hard to predict
What makes each human a unique biological system?
EMERGENT PROPERTIES; they give variation within the human species in spite of 99.9% genetic homology. They are a property which a collection or complex system has, but which an individual member does not have
How similar are we to chimpanzees?
98%
How similar are we to fruit flies?
65%
What are the characteristics of life?
- Responsiveness to the environment (the way physical activity, and drugs impact us)
- Growth and change
- Ability to reproduce
- Have a metabolism and breathe
- Maintain homeostasis
- Being made of cells
- Passing traits onto offspring
Who is Robert Sapolsky?
A neurologist and primatologist, explore the long-term health impacts of stress (e.g. long-term stress exposure contributes to mental health risk; investigate how culture/society influences our moral compass
What does the control and communication network do?
Coordinates our functions i.e. our networking