Thorough and accessible, this book presents the design principles of biological systems, and highlights the recurring circuit elements that make up biological networks. It provides a simple mathematical framework which can be used to understand and even design biological circuits. The textavoids specialist terms, focusing instead on several well-studied biological systems that concisely demonstrate key principles. An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits builds a solid foundation for the intuitive understanding of general principles. It encourages the reader to ask why a system is designed in a particular way and then proceeds to answer with simplified models.

This book provides an entry point into Systems Biology for researchers in genetics, molecular biology, cell biology, microbiology and biomedical science to understand the key concepts to expanding their work. Chapters organized around broader themes of Organelles and Organisms, Systems Properties of Biological Processes, Cellular Networks, and Systems Biology and Disease discuss the development of concepts, the current applications, and the future prospects. Emphasis is placed on concepts and insights into the multi-disciplinary nature of the field as well as the importance of systems biology in human biological research. Technology, being an extremely important aspect of scientific progress overall, and in the creation of new fields in particular, is discussed in 'boxes' within each chapter to relate to appropriate topics. - 2013 Honorable Mention for Single Volume Reference in Science from the Association of American Publishers' PROSE Awards - Emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of systems biology with contributions from leaders in a variety of disciplines - Includes the latest research developments in human and animal models to assist with translational research - Presents biological and computational aspects of the science side-by-side to facilitate collaboration between computational and biological researchers

A brilliant young scientist introduces us to the fascinating field that is changing our understanding of how the body works and the way we can approach healing. SYSTEMATIC is the first book to introduce general readers to systems biology, which is improving medical treatments and our understanding of living things. In traditional bottom-up biology, a biologist might spend years studying how a single protein works, but systems biology studies how networks of those proteins work together--how they promote health and how to remedy the situation when the system isn't functioning properly. Breakthroughs in systems biology became possible only when powerful computer technology enabled researchers to process massive amounts of data to study complete systems, and has led to progress in the study of gene regulation and inheritance, cancer drugs personalized to an individual's genetically unique tumor, insights into how the brain works, and the discovery that the bacteria and other microbes that live in the gut may drive malnutrition and obesity. Systems biology is allowing us to understand more complex phenomena than ever before. In accessible prose, SYSTEMATIC sheds light not only on how systems within the body work, but also on how research is yielding new kinds of remedies that enhance and harness the body's own defenses.

This advanced textbook is tailored for an introductory course in Systems Biology and is well-suited for biologists as well as engineers and computer scientists. It comes with student-friendly reading lists and a companion website featuring a short exam prep version of the book and educational modeling programs. The text is written in an easily accessible style and includes numerous worked examples and study questions in each chapter. For this edition, a section on medical systems biology has been included.

Epigenetics and Systems Biology highlights the need for collaboration between experiments and theoretical modeling that is required for successful application of systems biology in epigenetics studies. This book breaks down the obstacles which exist between systems biology and epigenetics researchers due to information barriers and segmented research, giving real-life examples of successful combinations of systems biology and epigenetics experiments. Each section covers one type of modeling and one set of epigenetic questions on which said models have been successfully applied. In addition, the book highlights how modeling and systems biology relate to studies of RNA, DNA, and genome instability, mechanisms of DNA damage signaling and repair, and the effect of the environment on genome stability. - Presents original research in a wider perspective to reveal potential for synergies between the two fields of study - Provides the latest experiments in primary literature for the modeling audience - Includes chapters written by experts in systems biology and epigenetics who have vast experience studying clinical applications

The first comprehensive single-authored textbook on genome-scale models and the bottom-up approach to systems biology.

The future of cancer research and the development of new therapeutic strategies rely on our ability to convert biological and clinical questions into mathematical models—integrating our knowledge of tumour progression mechanisms with the tsunami of information brought by high-throughput technologies such as microarrays and next-generation sequencing. Offering promising insights on how to defeat cancer, the emerging field of systems biology captures the complexity of biological phenomena using mathematical and computational tools. Novel Approaches to Fighting Cancer Drawn from the authors’ decade-long work in the cancer computational systems biology laboratory at Institut Curie (Paris, France), Computational Systems Biology of Cancer explains how to apply computational systems biology approaches to cancer research. The authors provide proven techniques and tools for cancer bioinformatics and systems biology research. Effectively Use Algorithmic Methods and Bioinformatics Tools in Real Biological Applications Suitable for readers in both the computational and life sciences, this self-contained guide assumes very limited background in biology, mathematics, and computer science. It explores how computational systems biology can help fight cancer in three essential aspects: Categorising tumours Finding new targets Designing improved and tailored therapeutic strategies Each chapter introduces a problem, presents applicable concepts and state-of-the-art methods, describes existing tools, illustrates applications using real cases, lists publically available data and software, and includes references to further reading. Some chapters also contain exercises. Figures from the text and scripts/data for reproducing a breast cancer data analysis are available at www.cancer-systems-biology.net.

An introduction to the mathematical concepts and techniques needed for the construction and analysis of models in molecular systems biology. Systems techniques are integral to current research in molecular cell biology, and system-level investigations are often accompanied by mathematical models. These models serve as working hypotheses: they help us to understand and predict the behavior of complex systems. This book offers an introduction to mathematical concepts and techniques needed for the construction and interpretation of models in molecular systems biology. It is accessible to upper-level undergraduate or graduate students in life science or engineering who have some familiarity with calculus, and will be a useful reference for researchers at all levels. The first four chapters cover the basics of mathematical modeling in molecular systems biology. The last four chapters address specific biological domains, treating modeling of metabolic networks, of signal transduction pathways, of gene regulatory networks, and of electrophysiology and neuronal action potentials. Chapters 3–8 end with optional sections that address more specialized modeling topics. Exercises, solvable with pen-and-paper calculations, appear throughout the text to encourage interaction with the mathematical techniques. More involved end-of-chapter problem sets require computational software. Appendixes provide a review of basic concepts of molecular biology, additional mathematical background material, and tutorials for two computational software packages (XPPAUT and MATLAB) that can be used for model simulation and analysis.

For decades biology has focused on decoding cellular processes one gene at a time, but many of the most pressing biological questions, as well as diseases such as cancer and heart disease, are related to complex systems involving the interaction of hundreds, or even thousands, of gene products and other factors. How do we begin to understand this complexity? Fundamentals of Systems Biology: From Synthetic Circuits to Whole-cell Models introduces students to methods they can use to tackle complex systems head-on, carefully walking them through studies that comprise the foundation and frontier of systems biology. The first section of the book focuses on bringing students quickly up to speed with a variety of modeling methods in the context of a synthetic biological circuit. This innovative approach builds intuition about the strengths and weaknesses of each method and becomes critical in the book’s second half, where much more complicated network models are addressed—including transcriptional, signaling, metabolic, and even integrated multi-network models. The approach makes the work much more accessible to novices (undergraduates, medical students, and biologists new to mathematical modeling) while still having much to offer experienced modelers--whether their interests are microbes, organs, whole organisms, diseases, synthetic biology, or just about any field that investigates living systems.

This book examines life not from the reductionist point of view, but rather asks the questions: what are the universal properties of living systems, and how can one construct from there a phenomenological theory of life that leads naturally to complex processes such as reproductive cellular systems, evolution and differentiation? The presentation is relatively non-technical to appeal to a broad spectrum of students and researchers.