Complex human disorders and molecular system engineering: Historical perspective and potential impacts

The challenging nature of complex human disorders has taught us that we can not untangle a disorder unless we understand how the ldquoenginerdquo of molecular systems works. After learning the basic physiology of different organs in the human body, a ldquomolecular revolutionrdquo occurred, which has now generated a huge amount of information regarding the function of individual molecules in human cells. The difficult task, however, is to understand how thousands of molecules communicate and work together to deliver a specific function, and more importantly, what goes wrong when the system fails and causes different diseases. The emerging field of systems biology is now opening the door for engineers, to join molecular biologists and enter the era of molecular biomedical engineering.