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Based on ongoing research and the national initiative toward the "new biology" and increasing efforts to apply quantitative (mathematical) approaches to biological questions, this work offers a framework to systematically analyze, predict, and modulate the behavior of complex biological systems. The book offers a collection of topics designed around the principle of project-based learning, focusing on problem solving that emphasizes important mathematical concepts and methods in the context of essential questions raised in biology. The use of free open software to facilitate some of the computationally heavy techniques within the work for which hand computations are not feasible is included.
List of contents
Preface by Raina Robeva and Terrell Hodge1. Mechanisms for Gene Regulation: A Boolean Network Model of the Lac Operon2. Epigenetic Features of the Lac Operon: Comparing Boolean and Ordinary Differential Equations Models3. Inferring the Topology of Gene Regulatory Networks: An Algebraic Approach to Reverse Engineering4. Global Dynamics Emerging from Local Interactions: Agent-based Modeling for the Life Sciences5. Agent-based Models and Optimal Control in Biology: An Algebraic Approach6. Neuronal Networks: A Discrete Model7. Predicting Plant Population Growth: Modeling with Projection Matrices8. Metabolic Pathways Analysis: A Linear Algebraic Approach9. Identifying CpG Islands: Sliding Windows and Hidden Markov Models10. Codon Usage: From Elementary Probability to Algebraic Geometry11. Phylogenetic Tree Reconstruction: Geometric Approaches
About the author
Raina Robeva was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Virginia and has broad research interests spanning theoretical mathematics, applied probability, and systems biology. Robeva is the founding Chief Editor of the journal Frontiers in Systems Biology and the lead author/editor of the books An Invitation to Biomathematics (2008), Mathematical Concepts and Methods in Modern Biology: Using Modern Discrete Models (2013), and Algebraic and Discrete Mathematical Methods for Modern Biology (2015), all published by Academic Press. She is Professor of Mathematical Sciences and Director of the Center for Science and Technology in Society at Sweet Briar College.
