Description

This book describes the essentials of a mathematical description of the dynamics of biochemical networks. It covers both deterministic and stochastic aspects of the dynamics. After providing a brief introduction to basic molecular biology, the book describes fundamentals of chemical kinetics. The chapter on signal transduction makes contact with ideas from feedback circuit analysis and signal processing. The chapter on switches and oscillators analyses in detail biological examples, both natural and synthetic. Excitable systems are introduced and contrasted with oscillators. The last chapter deals with pattern formation and development and brings us to current questions of robustness of performance of developmental networks. The book provides brief introductions to some of the mathematical tools required in the main text and in a dedicated appendix. The emphasis, throughout, is on understanding of the essential dynamical aspects rather than just on recipes to build complex models.

Features

• An up-to-date introduction to current topics in biophysics
• A short and succinct introduction by single author who moved from physics to biology
• Includes many topics inadequately treated in existing texts, like fluctuations
• Discusses the connections between biological systems and engineering systems, by bringing in topics from information theory or circuit analysis and control theory
• Emphasizes intuition guided by mathematics rather than just computational aspects of dynamical modeling

Reviews

"A highly welcome book in an important area."--David Weitz, Harvard University

"This field is probably in the middle of a transition from small science to big science."--Richard Berry, University of Oxford

Product Details

208 pages; 60 line illus.; ISBN13: 978-0-19-856804-9ISBN10: 0-19-856804-5

About the Author(s)