Researchers of the Centre for BioSystems Genomics together with colleagues published an opinion article in the journal Trends in Plant Science. They argue that the coupling of aggregation levels in plant sciences, termed Integral Quantification of Biological Organisation (IQBiO), might enhance the abilities to generate new desired plant phenotypes.
Modern plant breeding needs to increase agricultural productivity while decreasing the ecological footprint. This requires a holistic systems biology approach that couples different aggregation levels while considering the variables that affect these biological systems from cell to community, according to the authors. They state that the challenge is to generate accurate experimental data that can be used together with modelling concepts and techniques that allow experimentally verifying in silico predictions.
read more