Why am I passionate about this?
Ever since I studied control theory as an undergrad chemical engineer, mathematical models of complex phenomena have fascinated me. Mathematical models have the uncanny ability to uncover key aspects of biological systems, whose complexity poses a great challenge for understanding. As a researcher in systems biology for over 15 years, I have enjoyed reading several books that explore the exciting interface between computation and biology, trying to capture the burgeoning literature on this rapidly advancing field. I hope you enjoy these books and will join these authors on an exciting journey into the cartography of molecular networks underlying every living cell, using a variety of mathematical models!
Karthik's book list on modelling biological systems and networks
Why did Karthik love this book?
One of the earliest books on this subject, Uri Alon presents an engaging account of biological networks. Focussing on transcriptional networks, and their motifs, the book illustrates the nexus between network structures and functions. The second edition of the book launched a few years ago and has some updated content and new material on interesting functionalities such as fold change detection. Uri Alon is a very accomplished scientist, mentor, and a leader in the field of biological networks/systems biology.
1 author picked An Introduction to Systems Biology as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
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.