Synergy of experiment and computation in quantitative systems biology

Computational methods and biophysical experiments have advanced rapidly in parallel over recent decades, and are now applied widely to gain molecular-level insights on biological systems. The vast majority of biophysical methods report on the behavior of populations of molecules or on the properties of states of a system. Yet a quantitative understanding of biological systems requires a molecular-level description of phenomena that is generally unobtainable from measurements carried out in bulk. Computations carried out on single macromolecules do not necessarily reflect the statistical nature of molecular behaviors or systems that is captured by experiment. Yet computational approaches can be highly valuable for predicting and interpreting experimental results, and for designing critical experiments to test hypotheses.