Physiologie, une science qui se réveille.

Abstract

Physiology, or integrative biology, is currently facing the enormous accumulation of data produced by the genome programmes, and has to find new jouvences. Several areas were proposed in this article. (1) Several progresses in gene transfer technology, including transgenic technology, gave rise to a new concept, namely reverse physiology. Nevertheless, reverse physiology has also to account for transregulations and developmental modifications. (2) Studies on biological oscillators, either at the organ level (cardiac or respiratory rhythms) or at a cellular level (calcium or cAMP oscillations) were recently developed using new computer programmes that facilitate both non linear analysis and cross-analysis. (3) Functional genomics derived from genomics, nevertheless it is for the moment limited to transcripts. It should become a tool to study and integrate the whole cell activity providing proteins and function could be approached in the same way. The Physiome project is one of the projects that aim to both facilitate access to data from the genome project and to develop integrative programmes.