title: Maps, books and other metaphors for systems biology.
abstract: We briefly review the use of metaphors in science and progressively focus on fields from biology and molecular biology to genomics and bioinformatics. We discuss how metaphors are both a tool for scientific exploration and a medium for public communication of complex subjects, by various short examples. Finally, we propose a metaphor for systems biology that provides an illuminating perspective for the ambitious goals of this field and delimits its current agenda.
authors.affiliation: Computational Genomics Group, The European Bioinformatics Institute, EMBL Cambridge Outstation, Cambridge CB10 1SD, UK. ouzounis@ebi.ac.uk
authors.forename: Christos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ouzounis
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mazière
mesh_terms: D001877:Books; D019295:Computational Biology; D023281:Genomics; D008377:Maps as Topic; D019365:Metaphor; D008967:Molecular Biology; D049490:Systems Biology