Systems biology is concerned with complex interactions in biological
systems, employing a holistic manner in addition to classical reductionism. Systems
biology uses statistics, computational biology, and mathematical modelling to integrate
and analyse vast data sets to obtain a better knowledge of biology and predict the
behaviour of biological systems. It has gained attention in fisheries because of its
ability to uncover novel processes. It can generate a panorama of events that occur
within fish. In a systems biology approach, data from fish genomics, transcriptomics,
proteomics, and metabolomics are integrated, allowing for a comprehensive
understanding of dynamic systems with varying degrees of biological organisation.
Protein-protein interactions help us understand the systematic mechanisms underlying
overall growth, development, physiology, and disease in fish. Systems biology and
omics techniques are being applied in a variety of fisheries studies such as species
identification, understanding the processes of infection and stress tolerance, fishpathogen interactions, fish disease diagnostics and disease control, the impact of
environmental factors on fish, and determining the fish's response to these,
identification of gene sequences and biomarkers. Except for a few pioneering
applications of system biology to Fisheries, this approach to fisheries research is still in
its infancy stage. Systems biology has the potential to provide solutions to the diverse
issues of fisheries.
Keywords: Aquaculture, Biomarkers, Fish health, Genomics, Holistic approach, Metabolomics, MetaFishNet, Microarray, Modal organism, Protein-protein interaction, Proteomics, Sex determination, Toxicology, Transcriptomics.
