System Modeling in Cellular Biology

Research in systems biology requires the collaboration of researchers from diversebackgrounds, including biology, computer science, mathematics, statistics, physics, andbiochemistry. These collaborations, necessary because of the enormous breadth of background neededfor research in this field, can be hindered by differing understandings of the limitations andapplicability of techniques and concerns from different disciplines. This comprehensive introductionand overview of system modeling in biology makes the relevant background material from all pertinentfields accessible to researchers with different backgrounds.The emerging area of systems levelmodeling in cellular biology has lacked a critical and thorough overview. This book fills that gap.It is the first to provide the necessary critical comparison of concepts and approaches, with anemphasis on their possible applications. It presents key concepts and their theoretical background,including the concepts of robustness and modularity and their exploitation to study biologicalsystems; the best-known modeling approaches, and their advantages and disadvantages; lessons fromthe application of mathematical models to the study of cellular biology; and available modelingtools and datasets, along with their computational limitations.

Zoltan Szallasi is Professor at the Center for Biological Sequence Analysis, Technical University of Denmark.