Complex network interactions: cardiovascular systems biology

A large quantity of molecular information on heart development, function, and disease has been generated over recent decades. However, most recent studies have been dominated by reductionistic approaches, and thus many aspects remain unclear, particularly regarding the primary causes of complex cardiovascular diseases such as congenital heart malformations. With the advent of high-throughput technologies, systems-based approaches have developed rapidly in biology and medicine. In the biology of cardiovascular systems complex data within or across different molecular levels of biological systems or pathways can be integrated and combined to identify the causes underlying cardiac diseases, which might not be possible otherwise. This is in agreement with data suggesting that biological molecules in individual regulatory layers, such as transcripts, proteins, and metabolites, act within networksrather than independently of each other. Thus systems biology provides a promising approach to fully addressing the complexities of congenital heart disease.