An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits (Chapman & Hall/Crc Mathematical and Computational Biology) |  | Author: Uri Alon
Publisher: Chapman & Hall/CRC
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Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 119471
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.8 x 7 x 0.7
ISBN: 1584886420
Dewey Decimal Number: 570.285
EAN: 9781584886426
ASIN: 1584886420
Publication Date: July 7, 2006
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Product Description
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.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
 Great initiation into the field August 28, 2009
D. Peer (New York, NY)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a great and well written book, a milestone in the field. I use this book as part of the course material for my courses in "Systems Biology" and "Biological Networks" at Columbia University and I recommend this book to my students.
Systems Biology is a large and rapidly growing field, currently no two scientists agree on its complete scope. Rather than attempting to be an all encompassing shallow overview of the entire field, Uri Alon takes one topic and presents it in clarity and depth. This is the perfect introduction to the field because systems biology is not a pile of facts, but rather a scientific approach and way of thought.
This book takes the reader through the process of formulating an abstract simplification of very complex biology, using this simpler representation to discover recurring patterns (motifs)in the organization of biological networks. Then Alon rigorously demonstrates that this recurrence could not have occurred by chance, providing sound statistical arguments, and pedagogically highlighting statistical pitfalls. The majority of the book presents clear mathematical thought experiments to decipher what roles these "motifs" serve and why they are beneficial to the cell. Alon evaluates the type of environmental signals cells need to process and how the evolved network design provides the cell with robust and reliable signal processing. Importantly, the models proposed by Alon match observed empirical data.
Molecular biology is incredibly complex and Alon deductively presents a tour de force example on how one can use analytical tools to construct a simplified abstraction from which one can glean insight and understanding. A fine initiation into the field.
An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits August 13, 2009
Bor-Sen Chen (Hsinchu, Taiwan)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is an excellent textbook for systems biology. I have used it two times. One is a short course of systems biology in the summer 2008 for some professors who are interested in systems biology from different departments and different universities in Hsinchu, with background in statistics, applied math, engineering and biology. They found this book very useful for their researches on systems biology. Another is as a textbook of computational biology for graduate course in EE department of National Tsing Hua University. My students and I have learned a bit more from this book. This book offers an entirely different perspective on biology, from gene circuits and network motifs to networks as well as from the robustness and demand rule for gene regulation to the optimal gene circuit design. They are all described with simple but precise mathematic equations. Further, the role of evolution in robustness design of different biological circuits and systems is also discussed with several famous biological examples. The language of the book is very clear and the math is very simple, with both the math and the biology beautifully written. Therefore, I strongly recommend this book to those interested in systems biology.
delightful reading August 7, 2009
Leonardo Sepulveda Duran (Champaign, IL USA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Uri Alon searches for the most recurrent connectivity patterns (motifs) found in natural networks and then analyze their dynamical properties in detail. Although simple, the consequences of having these motifs (and combinations of them) in gene regulatory networks are not always easy to grasp, and the author makes a good job clarifying their function. Despite some mathematical fluency is assumed, I think the simplicity of his language, added to the explanatory figures accompanying the text, makes it easy to read and understand. A must for 'Systems Biology' oriented people, and a good lecture for any student interested in the field.
excellent book August 7, 2009
Dawei Hong (Camden, NJ United States)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
I used this book as the text for a graduate course in computational systems biology in the spring semester 2009. This book is an excellent text. It presents a lot of insights of how components in biological systems may work together. At the end of the semester, students from biology as well as computer science wrote me emails saying they enjoyed the class. It was not because my teaching rather the rich contents of the book.
Biology is a scientific area with a long history. A large amount of knowledge has accumulated in understanding details of single components in biological systems. It is the time to open a new field in biology, the study of systems biology. Apparently, systems biology is interdisciplinary. Because of this, the insights presented in this book is very much useful. I happened to read a couple of recent articles (some of which were in PNAS). In these articles, the idea of motif was used to find networks that control developmental processes based upon data collected in experiments. I believe this book would become classic in systems biology, and very much hope the author would continue the work to produce new edition(s) in the future.
Good Book August 7, 2009
R. Nagarajan (Arkansas)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Systems biology is a developing field and uses theoretical constructs across disciplines in investigating complex biological systems/processes. I am planing to use excerpts from it for my graduate course in systems biology. I have high regard for Dr. Alon's continued efforts in this area. I am positive that this concise book would be well-received by several researchers and students.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
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