Integrative approaches for data analysis in systems biology: Current advances

One of the main aims of systems biology is understanding of the biological system as a whole rather than focusing on individual factors, which can be achieved by data integration from different experiments allowing deeper insights in to the mechanisms of complex traits. With the rise of next-generation sequencing technologies and through large-scale consortia projects massive amount of heterogeneous datasets were generated in different fields such as genomics, transcriptomics or proteomics. Such datasets require developing novel approaches for meta-analysis and data integration to further facilitate multi-omics studies. Here we review current advances in systems biology approaches for data integration and highlight the need for further developments in this area.