We would like to thank all the experts for their insightful and very interesting comments that have been submitted in response to our review “Network science of biological systems at different scales”. We are delighted with the number of comments that have been written, and even more so with the positive opinions that these comments communicate to the wider audience [2–9]. Although methods of network science have long proven their value in relevantly addressing various challenges in the biological sciences, such interdisciplinary research often still struggles for funding and recognition at many academic levels.

In this reply, we would like to highlight the coming of age of network science, as well as data science, applied to biological systems in the broadest possible sense. We would also like to emphasize that the theoretical and modeling tools that have been developed by physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists have reached the maturity to effectively address the many challenges of our time, not least aiding the diagnosis and treatment of disease. In what follows, we briefly discuss the comments on our review in the light of this fact, and we also point out the many outstanding challenges as well as opportunities for future research.

M. Perc, M. Gosak, J. Dolenšek et al, Loosening the shackles of scientific disciplines with network science Reply to comments on “Network science of biological systems at different scales: A review”, Physics of Life Reviews 24 (2018) 162–167