The contribution of quantitative modeling to understanding of physiological mechanisms has been important in the past and will become even more significant with increasing complexity of signaling pathways and regulatory interactions. The new APS journal Function and the Physiome Journal ( launched under the auspices of IUPS) initiated a novel cooperative publishing approach enabling the parallel publication of experimental results and of the associated complex computational model. This combined computational – experimental approach is unique and offers a novel way to understand complex physiological mechanisms. Read more in the editorial written by Allan Cowley