Systems Biology by Dennis Vitkup

The lecture was about the field of Systems Biology, its origins, milestones and how its principles are applied to Autism research. The speaker's lab "develops and applies novel probabilistic techniques to analyze cellular networks. This involves developing methods that connect network structure to function and to phenotypes, which can be used to make experimentally verifiable predictions."

The field is interdisciplinary and is over a 100 years old. Some milestones are Harold Black's Negative Feedback Amplifier, Claude Shannon's Information Theory, and Judea Pearl's SCM and causal/probabilistic reasoning. Biological systems, in particular, are special in their capability of buffering/balancing environmental and genetic changes (Homeostatsis).

There are two approaches to understanding Complex Systems (broadly speaking): Integrative and Reductionst, which mean what you think they mean. In the former, we have consider the entire biological system's 'pieces'/elements and their combined, system-level behavior. In the latter, we reduce the system to some manageable/desired subunits and examine their behavior. You can do this at a lot of levels in Biological Systems:

Genomic -> Proteomic/Metabolomic -> Interactions: Networks -> Cellular -> Organ -> Organism -> Population -> Ecosystem

When it comes to mental illness/disorders, you can use Systems Biological approaches to perform multi-scale neurobiological analyses: Genetic, Cellular, Neuronal, Brain/Cognitive, Phenotypic. Mental illness has a long history of diagnosis and understanding (discussion on "dark humors", "black bile", and so on). We're much better at characterizing their pathophysiologies now. They have a very serious effect on societies.

Discussion on the heritability and genetic overlap between psychiatric disorders like Autism, Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, and Depression. These are as inheritable as height!

Autism specifically has a 1/100 or 1/50 incidence and has some biological theories around its causes: Antibodies, Gut Health, Testosterone in the womb, Mitochondrial "power failure", viruses that attack the sperm.

Discussion on genetic variance applied to Autism. Systems Bio approach discussed was to perhaps make a network of genes and identify clusters that would reveal something about the ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) functional network. Discussion on various neuron types and how they 'speak' to each other.

At the core of ASD are some Brain circuits in the Thalamus, Hippocampus, and Striatum. These are involved in decision-making and sensory integration. Discussion on the Unified Neurobiological Model of Mental Disorders (UNIMED).