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Interesting, indeed. I wrote my PhD in mathematical modeling in biology nearly 15 years ago, when systems biology was all the hype - I left the field ages ago, but it seems like there has not been significant progress into using mathematical models to guide hypothesis generation and experimental validation.

So while I agree with you in principle, it seems like fusion: always twenty years in the future.

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Historically much of computational biology was driven by people with no wet lab experience and no access to a wet lab so hypotheses went untested because nobody wanted to bet their grant on someone else's work they didn't understand or trust. Now that maths and computation are everywhere in biology there are more hybrid dry/wet labs or dry and wet labs working in long term collaborations. So I think there's been some progress but maybe not as much as one could have hoped.

Exactly. Thinking like a physicist is still pretty uncommon in biology, especially biological education. Hence the strong influence physicists had on the field. It also seems like there‘s still a mathematical framework missing to handle biological questions appropriately. Maybe we should revisit Rosen‘s Life Itself.

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