Everything we know, that lives, consists out of cells
and cells themselves consist of even more tiny building blocks,
that interact with each other
But how do we know about what happens in a cell,
which components interact with each other?
How do we, as scientists,
investigate such complex systems?
Complex systems are not something only scientists have to deal with,
we know complex systems from our daily life.
For example, if you’re giving a big party,
many people will interact with each other.
The outcome of the party,
whether it’s being joyful,
going completely wild and annoying your neighbours
or being rather boring,
depends on how your guests interact with each other.
So if you’re giving a big party,
and you want it to be fun for you and your neighbours,
you need to know how the people are interacting.
If all your guests are coming at the same time,
it’s very hard for you to figure out who is interacting with whom
there are just way too many people and it’s too crowded
You could, however,
also invite them to arrive at different times
and by this,
you just have to observe a few people at a time,
and see how they interact with each other.
And after doing this for a few times,
you know exactly whom you need for your perfect party.
In science, we do exactly the same:
Not with parties, but with cells.
To understand how cells work,
we take out a few components
and investigate how they interact with each other.
Once we understood how this works,
we can add more and more components.
And by doing this,
we can understand how complex systems work.
And after a long day,
we can have fun in our tiny complex system.
