title: Micro-separation toward systems biology.
abstract: Current biology is experiencing transformation in logic or philosophy that forces us to reevaluate the concept of cell, tissue or entire organism as a collection of individual components. Systems biology that aims at understanding biological system at the systems level is an emerging research area, which involves interdisciplinary collaborations of life sciences, computational and mathematical sciences, systems engineering, and analytical technology, etc. For analytical chemistry, developing innovative methods to meet the requirement of systems biology represents new challenges as also opportunities and responsibility. In this review, systems biology-oriented micro-separation technologies are introduced for comprehensive profiling of genome, proteome and metabolome, characterization of biomolecules interaction and single cell analysis such as capillary electrophoresis, ultra-thin layer gel electrophoresis, micro-column liquid chromatography, and their multidimensional combinations, parallel integrations, microfabricated formats, and nano technology involvement. Future challenges and directions are also suggested.
authors.affiliation: The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Photonics of MOE - Hubei Bioinformatics, Department of Systems Biology, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China. bfliu@mail.hust.edu.cn
authors.forename: Bi-Feng
authors.initials: BF
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Guisen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Du
authors.forename: Qingming
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Luo
mesh_terms: D002853:Chromatography, Liquid / Q000379:methods*; D004586:Electrophoresis / Q000379:methods*; D044085:Microfluidics; D049490:Systems Biology