Login / Signup

From Reductionism to Reintegration: Solving society's most pressing problems requires building bridges between data types across the life sciences.

Anne E ThessenPaul BogdanDavid J PattersonTheresa M CaseyCésar Hinojo-HinojoOrlando de LangeMelissa A Haendel
Published in: PLoS biology (2021)
Decades of reductionist approaches in biology have achieved spectacular progress, but the proliferation of subdisciplines, each with its own technical and social practices regarding data, impedes the growth of the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches now needed to address pressing societal challenges. Data integration is key to a reintegrated biology able to address global issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and sustainable ecosystem management. We identify major challenges to data integration and present a vision for a "Data as a Service"-oriented architecture to promote reuse of data for discovery. The proposed architecture includes standards development, new tools and services, and strategies for career-development and sustainability.
Keyphrases
  • electronic health record
  • climate change
  • healthcare
  • big data
  • mental health
  • signaling pathway
  • risk assessment
  • small molecule
  • data analysis
  • human health
  • health insurance
  • deep learning