Biological Modeling

Have you ever wondered why zebras have stripes? Have you ever wondered how your cells can quickly react to their environment and perform complex tasks without intelligence? Have you ever wondered why the original SARS coronavirus fizzled out but SARS-CoV-2 has spread like wildfire around the planet? Have you ever wondered how algorithms can be trained to "see" cells as well as a human?What these questions share is that they can start to be answered by modeling biological systems at...
More Description

Have you ever wondered why zebras have stripes? Have you ever wondered how your cells can quickly react to their environment and perform complex tasks without intelligence? Have you ever wondered why the original SARS coronavirus fizzled out but SARS-CoV-2 has spread like wildfire around the planet? Have you ever wondered how algorithms can be trained to "see" cells as well as a human?What these questions share is that they can start to be answered by modeling biological systems at multiple "scales" of resolution, from the microscopic to the molecular.In this book, we will explain how to build models of biological systems that are relatively simple but nevertheless provide us with deep, fascinating insights into how those systems operate.For readers interested in getting their hands dirty with biological modeling, we provide tutorials explaining how to build the models used in this book at the website of the course companion: http://biologicalmodeling.org.