Brig's Handbook of Methods & Research in Molecular Systems Biology (2 Volumes)

"Systems biology is the computational and mathematical modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological systems, using a holistic approach (holism instead of the more traditional reductionism) to biological research. Particularly from year 2000 onwards, the concept has been used widely in biology in a variety of contexts. The Human Genome Project is an example of applied systems thinking in biology which has led to new, collaborative ways of working on problems in the biological field of genetics. One of the outreaching aims of systems biology is to model and discover emergent properties, properties of cells, tissues and organisms functioning as a system whose theoretical description is only possible using techniques of systems biology. These typically involve metabolic networks or cell signaling networks. Systems biomedicine, also called systems biomedical science, is the application of systems biology to the understanding and modulation of developmental and pathological processes in humans, and in animal and cellular models. Whereas systems biology aims at modeling exhaustive networks of interactions (with the long-term goal of, for example, creating a comprehensive computational model of the cell), mainly at intra-cellular level, systems biomedicine emphasizes the multilevel, hierarchical nature of the models (molecule, organelle, cell, tissue, organ, individual/genotype, environmental factor, population, ecosystem) by discovering and selecting the key factors at each level and integrating them into models that reveal the global, emergent behavior of the biological process under consideration. This book has been written in easy and fluent language expressive and self-explanatory labelled diagrams, concise but not too brief, written to the point starting from fundamentals and finishing to the most advanced and current concepts. All diagrams have been provided with detailed legends. Some diagrams have been drawn the author himself from the original source, while the remaining ones are quoted from the authentic works."