Modular Biological Complexity

There is a great new piece in Science on "Modular Biological Complexity". The author argues that without modules biology would be too complex to understand because it would take an eternity to run the experiments on all the many interactions. Note the idea of the "complexity brake".

Koch C. Systems biology. Modular biological complexity. Science. 2012 Aug
3;337(6094):531-2. [PubMed]

"Given the large number of components that cannot be averaged away, any possible technological advance is overwhelmed by the relentless growth of interactions among all components of the system. It is not feasible to understand evolved organisms by exhaustively cataloging all interactions in a comprehensive, bottom-up manner."