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Power Laws, Scale-free Networks and Genome Biology deals with crucial aspects of the theoretical foundations of systems biology, namely power law distributions and scale-free networks which have emerged as the hallmarks of biological organization in the post-genomic era. The chapters in the book not only describe the interesting mathematical properties of biological networks but moves beyond phenomenology, toward models of evolution capable of explaining the emergence of these features. The collection of chapters, contributed by both physicists and biologists, strives to address the problems in this field in a rigorous but not excessively mathematical manner and to represent different viewpoints, which is crucial in this emerging discipline. Each chapter includes, in addition to technical descriptions of properties of biological networks and evolutionary models, a more general and accessible introduction to the respective problems. Most chapters emphasize the potential of theoretical systems biology for discovery of new biological phenomena.
List of contents
Power Laws in Biological Networks.- Graphical Analysis of Biocomplex Networks and Transport Phenomena.- Large-Scale Topological Properties of Molecular Networks.- The Connectivity of Large Genetic Networks.- The Drosophila Protein Interaction Network May Be neither Power-Law nor Scale-Free.- Birth and Death Models of Genome Evolution.- Scale-Free Evolution.- Gene Regulatory Networks.- Power Law Correlations in DNA Sequences.- Analytical Evolutionary Model for Protein Fold Occurrence in Genomes, Accounting for the Effects of Gene Duplication, Deletion, Acquisition and Selective Pressure.- The Protein Universes.- The Role of Computation in Complex Regulatory Networks.- Neutrality and Selection in the Evolution of Gene Families.- Scaling Laws in the Functional Content of Genomes.
Summary
Power Laws, Scale-free Networks and Genome Biology deals with crucial aspects of the theoretical foundations of systems biology, namely power law distributions and scale-free networks which have emerged as the hallmarks of biological organization in the post-genomic era. The chapters in the book not only describe the interesting mathematical properties of biological networks but moves beyond phenomenology, toward models of evolution capable of explaining the emergence of these features. The collection of chapters, contributed by both physicists and biologists, strives to address the problems in this field in a rigorous but not excessively mathematical manner and to represent different viewpoints, which is crucial in this emerging discipline. Each chapter includes, in addition to technical descriptions of properties of biological networks and evolutionary models, a more general and accessible introduction to the respective problems. Most chapters emphasize the potential of theoretical systems biology for discovery of new biological phenomena.
