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The subject of this issue of BioEssays is the modelling of complex biological systems. Since all biological systems are complex and since every attempt to come to grips with particular biological systems involves an element of modelling, it could be argued that the theme of this special issue is nothing less than biological science itself. Indeed, if the term "complexity" is simply a synonym for "complicated" or "intricate" or just "hard to understand," then indeed most biological research is about complexity. But the term, as it is employed in Science, tends to mean something more precise than merely difficult or complicated: complexity is a characteristic of a system whose over-all properties are not readily predictable from what is known about its components. It is the unexpected ("emergent") interactive properties of a system that makes a biological system "complex." There is nothing mystical about such properties; their existence simply points to gaps in our knowledge. One might, therefore, say that the role of research on complex biological systems is to reduce them, conceptually, to the merely complicated. Complexity studies take off from the point at which classical reductionist-analytical strategies, focussing on componenet properties and actions, begin to fail in describing the dynamic behaviour of the system of which they are a part.

As the reader goes through these articles, certain recurring themes will become apparent. These include: the importance of modularity as an organizing principle in biological systems; the employment of that feature in modelling exercises; the prediction and explanation of critical thresholds for novel behaviours; the ability of computing power to help model previously intractable systemic features; and the use of recursive applications of models of data to refine--or falsify--those models. We believe that the articles in this special issue not only show that the mathematization of biology is proceeding apace but that such analytical approaches have much to offer to biological science.

These articles are provided free online by Wiley-Liss, Inc., the publishers of BioEssays, as a service to the scientific community.

Page updated December 12, 2002