Denis Noble
Encyclopedia
Denis Noble CBE FRS FRCP (born November 16, 1936) is a British
biologist
who held the Burdon Sanderson Chair of Cardiovascular Physiology at Oxford University
from 1984 to 2004 and was appointed Professor Emeritus and co-Director of Computational Physiology. He is one of the pioneers of Systems Biology
and developed the first viable mathematical model of the working heart
in 1960. His research focuses on using computer models
of biological organs
and organ systems to interpret function from the molecular level to the whole organism. Together with international collaborators, his team has used supercomputers to create the first virtual organ, the virtual heart.
As Secretary-General of the International Union of Physiological Sciences 1993-2001, he played a major role in launching the Physiome
Project, an international project to use computer simulations to create the quantitative physiological models necessary to interpret the genome
, and he was elected President of the IUPS at its world congress in Kyoto
in 2009
He is also a philosopher of biology, and his book The Music of Life challenges the foundations of current biological sciences, questions the central dogma, its unidirectional view of information flow, and its imposition of a bottom-up methodology for research in the life sciences
and University College London
(UCL). In 1958 he began his investigations into the mechanisms of heartbeat. This led to two seminal papers in Nature
in 1960 giving the first proper simulation of the heart. From this work it became clear that there was not a single oscillator which controlled heartbeat, but rather this was an emergent property of the feedback loops in the various channels. In 1961 he obtained his PhD working under Otto Hutter at UCL.
Author or editor of 10 books, including:
in 1977 and the Ueda lecture at Tokyo University in 1985 and 1990. He was President of the Medical Section of the British Association 1991-92.
He was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Physicians
in 1988 and an Honorary Fellow in 1994, an Honorary Member of the American Physiological Society
in 1996 and of the Japanese Physiological Society in 1998. In 1999 he was awarded a CBE
, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
.
He has honorary doctorates from Sheffield University (2004), the Université de Bordeaux (2005) and the University of Warwick
(2008).
He is an Honorary Foreign Member of the Académie Royale de Médecine de Belgique (1993), and received the Pavlov Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences
(2004).
He plays classical guitar and sings Occitan troubadour and folk songs. In addition to English, he has lectured in French, Italian, Occitan, Japanese and Korean.
and genetic reductionism. He points out that there are many examples of feedback loops and "downward causation
" in biology, and that it is not reasonable to privilege one level of understanding over all others. He also explains that gene
s in fact work in groups and systems, so that the genome is more like a set of organ pipes than a "blueprint for life".
He contrasts Dawkins
's famous statement in The Selfish Gene
("Now they [genes] swarm ... safe inside gigantic lumbering robots ... they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence") with his own view: "Now they [genes] are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence". He then suggests that there is no empirical difference between these statements, and says that they differ in "metaphor" and "sociological or polemical viewpoint".
He argues that "the paradigms for genetic causality in biological systems are seriously confused" and that "The metaphors that served us well during the molecular biological phase of recent decades have limited or even misleading impacts in the multilevel world of systems biology. New paradigms are needed if we are to succeed in unravelling multifactorial genetic causation at higher levels of physiological function and so to explain the phenomena that genetics was originally about."
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
biologist
Biologist
A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...
who held the Burdon Sanderson Chair of Cardiovascular Physiology at Oxford University
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
from 1984 to 2004 and was appointed Professor Emeritus and co-Director of Computational Physiology. He is one of the pioneers of Systems Biology
Systems biology
Systems biology is a term used to describe a number of trends in bioscience research, and a movement which draws on those trends. Proponents describe systems biology as a biology-based inter-disciplinary study field that focuses on complex interactions in biological systems, claiming that it uses...
and developed the first viable mathematical model of the working heart
Heart
The heart is a myogenic muscular organ found in all animals with a circulatory system , that is responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions...
in 1960. His research focuses on using computer models
Computer simulation
A computer simulation, a computer model, or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system...
of biological organs
Organ (anatomy)
In biology, an organ is a collection of tissues joined in structural unit to serve a common function. Usually there is a main tissue and sporadic tissues . The main tissue is the one that is unique for the specific organ. For example, main tissue in the heart is the myocardium, while sporadic are...
and organ systems to interpret function from the molecular level to the whole organism. Together with international collaborators, his team has used supercomputers to create the first virtual organ, the virtual heart.
As Secretary-General of the International Union of Physiological Sciences 1993-2001, he played a major role in launching the Physiome
Physiome
The physiome of an individual's or species'physiological state is the description of itsfunctional behavior. The physiome describes the physiological dynamics ofthe normal intact organism and is built upon information and...
Project, an international project to use computer simulations to create the quantitative physiological models necessary to interpret the genome
Genome
In modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....
, and he was elected President of the IUPS at its world congress in Kyoto
Kyoto
is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...
in 2009
He is also a philosopher of biology, and his book The Music of Life challenges the foundations of current biological sciences, questions the central dogma, its unidirectional view of information flow, and its imposition of a bottom-up methodology for research in the life sciences
Education
Noble was educated at Emanuel SchoolEmanuel School
Emanuel School is a co-educational independent school in Battersea, south-west London. The school was founded by Lady Dacre and Elizabeth I in 1594. Today it has some 710 pupils, aged between ten and eighteen.-History:...
and University College London
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
(UCL). In 1958 he began his investigations into the mechanisms of heartbeat. This led to two seminal papers in Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
in 1960 giving the first proper simulation of the heart. From this work it became clear that there was not a single oscillator which controlled heartbeat, but rather this was an emergent property of the feedback loops in the various channels. In 1961 he obtained his PhD working under Otto Hutter at UCL.
Professional Work
- 1961—1963. Assistant Lecturer in Physiology, University College London
- 1961—1963. Vice-Warden of Connaught Hall (University of London)
- 1963—1984. Fellow and Tutor, Balliol College, Oxford. University Lecturer in Physiology
- 1969—1970. Visiting Professor and Visiting Scientist of the Canadian MRC
- 1971—1989. Head (Praefectus) of the Balliol College Graduate Centre at Holywell Manor
- 1975—1985 Leader of MRC Programme Grant team
- 1983—1985. Vice-Master of Balliol College
- 1984—2004 Burdon Sanderson Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology, Oxford University
- 1984—2004 Professorial Fellow, Balliol College
- From 2004 Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology, Oxford University
- From 2004 Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford
- From 2004 Director of Computational Physiology, Co-Director of e-science centre, Oxford
- 2003-2007 Adjunct Professor Xi’an Jiaotong University, Shaanxi province, China
- From 2005 Visiting Professor, Osaka University, Japan
- 2009-2013 President, International Union of Physiological Sciences (IUPS)
- From 2011 Editor in Chief - Interface Focus, published by the Royal SocietyRoyal SocietyThe Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
Publications
Over 350 articles in academic journals, including Nature, Science, PNAS, Journal of Physiology, Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology; Many articles in national press;Author or editor of 10 books, including:
- The Initiation of the Heartbeat (OUP, 1975, 1979 and Japanese translation), sole author;
- Electric Current Flow in Excitable Cells (OUP 1975, 1988), with JJB Jack and RW Tsien;
- Electrophysiology of Single Cardiac Cells, 1987
- Goals, No Goals and Own Goals, 1989
- Sodium-Calcium Exchange, 1989
- Ionic Channels and the Effect of Taurine on the Heart, 1993
- The Logic of Life (OUP 1993), co-editor with CAR Boyd, and author;
- The Ethics of Life (UNESCO 1997) co-editor with J-D Vincent;
- The Music of Life (OUP 2006)ISBN 0-19-929573-5 La Musique de la Vie, (Seuil, 2007); La Musica della Vita(Italian) & La Música de la Vida (Madrid, Akal) 生命の音楽：ゲノムを越える生物学 (Japanese edition, 2009), Glasba življenja (Slovenian, 2010), Korean and Chinese translations in preparation.
Awards and recognition
His major invited lectures include the Darwin Lecture for the British Association in 1966, the Nahum Lecture at YaleYALE
RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...
in 1977 and the Ueda lecture at Tokyo University in 1985 and 1990. He was President of the Medical Section of the British Association 1991-92.
He was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal College of Physicians
Royal College of Physicians
The Royal College of Physicians of London was founded in 1518 as the College of Physicians by royal charter of King Henry VIII in 1518 - the first medical institution in England to receive a royal charter...
in 1988 and an Honorary Fellow in 1994, an Honorary Member of the American Physiological Society
American Physiological Society
The American Physiological Society was founded in 1887 with 28 members. Of them, 21 were graduates of medical schools, but only 12 had studied in schools that had a professor of physiology. Today, the APS has 10,500 members, most of whom hold doctoral degrees in medicine, physiology or other...
in 1996 and of the Japanese Physiological Society in 1998. In 1999 he was awarded a CBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
.
He has honorary doctorates from Sheffield University (2004), the Université de Bordeaux (2005) and the University of Warwick
University of Warwick
The University of Warwick is a public research university located in Coventry, United Kingdom...
(2008).
He is an Honorary Foreign Member of the Académie Royale de Médecine de Belgique (1993), and received the Pavlov Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences consists of the national academy of Russia and a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation as well as auxiliary scientific and social units like libraries, publishers and hospitals....
(2004).
He plays classical guitar and sings Occitan troubadour and folk songs. In addition to English, he has lectured in French, Italian, Occitan, Japanese and Korean.
Views on reductionism
His 2006 book The Music of Life examines some of the basic aspects of systems biology, and is critical of the ideas of genetic determinismGenetic determinism
Genetic determinism is the belief that genes determine morphological and behavioral traits and do so with little or no influence from environmental factors....
and genetic reductionism. He points out that there are many examples of feedback loops and "downward causation
Causality
Causality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
" in biology, and that it is not reasonable to privilege one level of understanding over all others. He also explains that gene
Gene
A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...
s in fact work in groups and systems, so that the genome is more like a set of organ pipes than a "blueprint for life".
He contrasts Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
's famous statement in The Selfish Gene
The Selfish Gene
The Selfish Gene is a book on evolution by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976. It builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams's first book Adaptation and Natural Selection. Dawkins coined the term "selfish gene" as a way of expressing the gene-centred view of evolution as opposed to the...
("Now they [genes] swarm ... safe inside gigantic lumbering robots ... they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence") with his own view: "Now they [genes] are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence". He then suggests that there is no empirical difference between these statements, and says that they differ in "metaphor" and "sociological or polemical viewpoint".
He argues that "the paradigms for genetic causality in biological systems are seriously confused" and that "The metaphors that served us well during the molecular biological phase of recent decades have limited or even misleading impacts in the multilevel world of systems biology. New paradigms are needed if we are to succeed in unravelling multifactorial genetic causation at higher levels of physiological function and so to explain the phenomena that genetics was originally about."
Principles of Systems Biology
Noble offers 10 Principles of Systems Biology:- Biological functionality is multi-level
- Transmission of information is not one way
- DNA is not the sole transmitter of inheritance
- The theory of biological relativity: there is no privileged level of causality
- Gene ontology will fail without higher-level insight
- There is no genetic program
- There are no programs at any other level
- There are no programs in the brain
- The self is not an object
- There are many more to be discovered; a genuine ‘theory of biology’ does not yet exist
Sources
- (for basic biographical information) Who's WhoWho's WhoWho's Who is the title of a number of reference publications, generally containing concise biographical information on a particular group of people...
2004. - All systems go article in The EconomistThe EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
25-Oct-2007 discussing Noble's work - Noble CV at CNRS site
External links
- Denis Noble
- The Music of Life - A view on nature and nurture Pulse Project Podcast: "The Music of Life - A view on nature and nurture" (15 October 2008, Oxford)
- Molecules to Organisms: What directs the music of life Pulse Project Podcast: "Molecules to Organisms: What directs the music of life" (22 January 2008, Oxford)