Form follows function: the architecture of complex networks

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Abstract
Mol Syst Biol. 2: 42 The architectural tourist coming to Chicago for only a few days will have a hard time planning her visit. In any case, she is unlikely to skip such masterpieces as the Carson, Pirie, Scott and Co. building, by Louis Sullivan, or the SR Crown Hall, in the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The philosophy of both architects revolved around the premise ‘form follows function,’ which became a mantra for numerous other leading architects and industrial designers during a good part of the last century. In biology, evolution operates according to a similar premise because the form that provides better functionality is likely to be selected. With the advent of high‐throughput technologies in molecular biology, such an observation has regained relevance. While data sets continue to grow and systems‐level molecular information becomes available for more and more organisms, the hope is that we can obtain greater insight into cellular processes by analysing the architecture of complex biochemical networks (Wagner, 2005). In a recent article, Ohtsuki et al (2006) discuss an interesting example of the interplay between form and function in complex evolutionary systems. Understanding how altruistic attitudes can be maintained …