Toward Nanosystems Biology

The grand vision of Systems Biology requires instrumentation that will make it possible to follow the natural logic of complex cellular biochemical processes within interacting cellular systems -- in real time with single-cell resolution. Nanobiotechnology is poised to deliver this; it is beginning to enable the creation of ultrasmall electronic devices offering unprecedented opportunities for genomic and proteomic sensing applications. In this talk I will attempt to outline an (admittedly) long-term view of how cellular systems in hybrid devices might ultimately be harnessed for applications such as early disease detection, drug discovery, and fundamental medical and biological research. Micro- and nanotechnology are poised to provide the requisite tools for this and, indeed, a number of laboratories (including ours) are now taking the first steps toward this vision by embedding nanoscale biosensor arrays into microfluidic systems to form chip-based electronic laboratories for cell biology. When fully realized, such approaches will permit observation and control of multiple intra- and inter-cellular interactions. This technology will extend the opportunity to observe and ultimately reverse-engineer biochemical networks, through the techniques of systems biology carried out at the level of the �circuitry" of the individual cell. I will conclude the talk by hazarding guesses as to time scale over which elements of this technology will likely come to fruition.