Pathways and Networks
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Pathways and Networks
This page is a placeholder, or under current development; it is here principally to establish the logical framework of the site. The material on this page is correct, but incomplete.
On of the enduring contributions of 20th century biochemistry was the realization that the chemistry of life is not laid out in single-step reactions, but in organized, multi-step transformations across numerous intermediates: the concept of the biochemical pathway. The concept was productively applied to other multi-step biological phenomena: signalling pathways and developmental pathways are just two. However, the sobering reality is that interactions in biology are not laid out so neatly. Rather we encounter multiple cross links between pathway components, which give rise to interconnected networks of components.