Washington

The best way to understand complex biological systems may well be through integrating different scientific disciplines. But a panel of high-profile scientists agreed last week that the task of achieving this goal is itself inherently complex.

The panel discussion, held in Washington last week, deliberated the concept of interdisciplinary approaches to complex systems. The session came at the end of a three-day meeting on ‘Biology: Challenges for the New Millennium’, co-sponsored by the American Institute of Biological Sciences and the Smithsonian Institution.

Problems that would benefit from a complex-systems approach include understanding how elements in an ecosystem contribute to environmental change, and how proteins interact to produce particular end results.

“Do you start teaching synthesis in high school and at the undergraduate level?” asked Marvalee Wake, Chancellor's Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. “Is that the goal?”

Wilson: begin by understanding one component. Credit: AP

No, said Edward Wilson, honorary curator in entomology of Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology and Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of The Ants (Harvard, 1990). He advised starting with an understanding of a single component of a system — whether one insect in an ecosystem or one protein in a signal transduction pathway. “When you know enough about basic biology, then you are ready to attack complex systems,” said Wilson.

“You have to be really good at something, and then know a little about a lot,” echoed Daniel Janzen, professor of biology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Not everyone agreed. Richard Norgaard, president of the International Society for Ecological Economics, which encourages an integrative approach to ecology, argued that complex systems biology and ecology should be emphasized throughout education, not embraced “after your hair turns grey”.

Gordon Orians, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, said that, if integration meant literacy in everything, science was setting itself up for “massive failure”. Instead, he proposed that biologists should agree on the smallest set of shared knowledge necessary for ‘bioliteracy’, then be free to develop specialized expertise.

Gene Likens, professor of ecology at Yale and Rutgers, was pessimistic. Scientists would have to embrace complexity and do a better job of communicating with experts from other subdisciplines. “I don't even see us trying,” he said.