Microbial systems biology: new frontiers open to predictive microbiology

The field of Systems Biology is a rapidly evolving area of research. It follows on from the previous experimental and theoretical 'omics' revolution in biology. Now that we have through the use of these tools many 'indices' of biological systems available the next step is to actually start composing the systems that these indices specify. In this paper we will discuss the developments in the field of Systems Biology as they pertain to predictive food microbiology and give an example of state of the art current approaches. The data discussed in the case study deal with the resistance of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae towards environmental temperature changes through adaptation of its metabolism, protein signalling and gene-expression. The results are integrated and its implications for the definition of new experiments discussed; the iteration between experiment driven model definition and model driven experimentation being characteristic for contemporary Systems Biology approaches. The stress condition discussed represents in no way a practical situation in food microbiology but what it teaches may well be applied in such cases. We will indicate how the latter may be achieved.