We wait for disease to shout-What if we listened when biology whispered?
Publication Title
Cell Syst
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-18-2026
Keywords
washington; isb; artificial intelligence
Abstract
Most diseases are not caused by large-effect single factors but by the cumulative impact of small, context-dependent perturbations arising from genetic variants, personal behavior, or environmental exposures, a phenomenon we term the "long tail" of biology. Early disease signals often differ from late-stage biomarkers and evolve across demographic, lifestyle, and environmental contexts. Shifting medicine from reactive treatment to proactive health requires detecting and interpreting these signals. This requires longitudinal, multimodal data collection; non-invasive, scalable biosensing platforms; new technologies for interrogating biological complexity; and AI models capable of contextual, mechanistic reasoning. We propose an "N-of-1 analyzer" framework to track divergence from personal baselines across analytes, relationships, networks, and trajectories, interpreted through digital-twin simulations and knowledge-grounded foundational models. This framework enables early, individualized insights into disease risk and system decline, offering a path toward scalable precision prevention. Regulatory innovations will have to evolve, embracing complexity instead of reducing it to the mean.
Specialty/Research Institute
Institute for Systems Biology
DOI
10.1016/j.cels.2025.101509
