# *Genome 2 Phenome 4 Non-Biologists Workshop*: Systems Biology & Networks, April 1 2021

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## Systems Biology & Networks
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### Learning Objectives:

* Understand how biological networks vary in scope
* Ex. cellular vs. organismal vs. ecosystem
* Conceptualize biological networks as *scale-free* consisting of *nodes* and *edges*
* Ex. we are interested in a specific organism/cell in a broader context, this often becomes the *hub node*
* Know ecosystem interaction thinking:
* Ex. Microorganisms and microbiomes create a diverse metabolic network inside and outside hosts

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### Question 1:
**How do we put crops and livestock into the broader context with their environments?**

* Breakout Room 1:

* Breakout Room 2:
Relationships between crops and environment - can relate crop biomass to livestock growth to predict the efficiency of crop rotation.
In hydroponics: there is a balance between energy and nutrition.

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Need to consider interrelationships between plants and animalsin the ecosystem.
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### Question 2:

**What relationships can we derive at different biological scales that affect phenotyping?**

* Breakout Room 1:
* Room 1 feels that this is a confusing question. Molecular scale might include transcription factors where at the protein scale may mean proteins interacting together to make a protein complex. Cells interacting together to make an organ. Nutrition (what an organism consumes) can affect what the organism can do. Populations of organisms can work together -- e.g., plants growing together so densely that they shade out everything else.

* Breakout Room 2:
Environment affects which genes are turned off and on at the cellular level as well as the organism level
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The measurement system will be very different depending on the scale - microscope to satellite. Micro to landscape scale. i.e. nitrogen and carbon cycles.
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### Question 3:
**Why might we want to pursue a systems biology approach?**

* Breakout Room 1:
* Need to think about the system to understand the impacts of how inputs affect both the organism of interest as well as the environment in which it lives. For example, fertilizers added to agriculture can help plants grow, but can negatively impact the surrounding environment. Important to keep the big picture in mind. Another example, space junk. Systems biology helps get the "big picture" of what all the components of a genome are doing when they work together. For example, transcriptional changes in response to developmental or environmental changes.

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* Breakout Room 3:
Less likely to miss something if we think at the system level. Reductionism vs system approach. Miss interactions if we study in isolation.
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### Comments:

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**Resources for Further Learning:**

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