How to Study Biology with Systems Engineering Principles

Intelligent Design the Future

Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

Science, Philosophy, Astronomy, Society & Culture, Life Sciences

4 • 993 Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

Traditional methods in biology have proven insufficient for understanding and accurately predicting complex biological systems. Why? The great majority of biologists are trained to study life from the bottom up, as the result of unguided evolutionary processes. It turns out there are better ways to observe, question, hypothesize, experiment, and analyze a complex system. On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid welcomes biochemist and metabolic nutritionist Dr. Emily Reeves to the podcast to discuss her co-authored paper on how biologists can apply principles from systems engineering to biology to better approach the study of complex living systems. Dr. Reeves explains how the new methodology works and how it can produce fruitful scientific research. Source

Transcript

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0:00.0	ID the Future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
0:11.7	Well, welcome to the ID the Future podcast. I'm Andrew McDermid.
0:16.1	And today I'm welcoming to the show Dr. Emily Reeves once again to discuss a paper that she recently co-authored
0:22.9	that lays out a methodology based on systems engineering that can assist the everyday biologist,
0:29.9	that's right, I said biologist, in the study of living things.
0:34.6	Now, Dr. Reeves, in case you don't know her, is a biochemist, metabolic nutritionist,
0:39.5	and aspiring systems biologist. Her doctoral studies were completed at Texas A&M University
0:45.4	in biochemistry and biophysics. Emily is currently an active clinician for metabolic nutrition
0:51.7	and nutritional genomics at neutroplexity. She's also working with
0:56.5	fellows right here at Discovery Institute and the greater scientific community to promote
1:01.3	integration of engineering and biology. It's exciting stuff. Emily, welcome back to the show.
1:07.3	Thank you, Andrew. Thank you so much. And as you know, scientists love to talk about their research,
1:13.4	and I'm no exception, so I'm really excited to be here today. Yeah. Well, welcome. So today we get to
1:20.4	talk about a paper you co-authored that was published in 2024 in the IEE's Open Journal of Systems Engineering. It's titled, a model-based reverse
1:31.2	system engineering methodology for analyzing complex biological systems with a case study in glycolysis.
1:39.4	And we'll get to that part a little later. But first, your paper is about taking principles from systems engineering
1:45.9	and applying them to the study of biology. So let's get a few terms going first, just so our
1:53.3	viewers and listeners can stay on board. How do you define systems engineering? Yeah. So systems engineering is really the field that's involved with planning,
2:05.3	developing, and designing, and constructing human engineered systems.
2:10.0	So it's what is required to ensure that all components of these systems work together effectively
2:16.5	to achieve goals that are set by the designers.
2:21.4	And this is required for building cars, cell phones, and computers.
	...

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