Networks, Degeneracy and Bow ties: A Unifying Perspective of Immunological Paradigms and Architectures

Envisioning architectures, paradigms and principles is helpful and necessary to scientists to comprehend the complexity of biological systems. Network biology, for instance, is one of the most recent paradigms that have proven to be a successful approach to gain insights into the organization of biochemical networks and systems. We believe that a more integrated and unitary view of existing paradigms, principles, and concepts regarding biological systems will be even more helpful in understanding their complex organizational issues. In this view, we confront some of the most interesting ideas in systems biology such as those of network, degeneracy, and bow tie, and propose that the merging of such concepts into a more unitary view allows to re-interpret many biological phenomena in different and yet unexplored perspectives.