Product Description
Presenting the main concepts, this book leads students as well as advanced researchers from different disciplines to an understanding of current ideas in the complex field of comprehensive experimental investigation of biological objects, analysis of data, development of models, simulation, and hypothesis generation. It provides readers with guidance on how a specific complex biological question may be tackled: How to formulate questions that can be answered Which experiments to perform Where to find information in databases and on the Internet What kinds of models are appropriate How to use simulation tools What can be learned from the comparison of experimental data and modeling results How to make testable predictions The authors demonstrate how mathematical concepts can illuminate the principles underlying biology at a genetic, molecular, cellular and even organism level, and how to use mathematical tools for analysis and prediction.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 2.5 based on 2 reviews)

A nice book that covers a lot by Peter (UK)

4 Stars
March 15, 2006
I'm studying biophysics and I recently bought the book "Systems Biology in Practice". It is quite expensive, but I wanted to read up about Systems Biology, since we currently discuss this in our Bioinformatics lectures. The book consists of three major parts, the first contains three introductory chapters about biology, mathematics and experimental techniques, the second is the main part which contains 8 chapters that describe mathematical models of many different biological processes like gene expression, biological oscillations or signal transduction pathways. The last part has two chapters that deal with databases and software tools that are available over the internet. I personally found the "Biology in a Nutshell" chapter very helpful, since my biological knowledge had several gaps and the chapter is a very condensed presentation of the most important biological facts. I think it is also the main aim of the three chapters about biology, mathematics and experimental techniques to provide people coming from different fields with some basic information about those topics. All in all the book covers a large variety of different topics and the models and information is presented with helpful examples and figures, so that I find it quite entertaining to read. My only point of critique is that I'm still not sure what systems biology is, since there seems to be no generally accepted definition. However, I found the book very useful to understand mathematical modelling of biochemical systems and I use it often as reference book.

I can not recommend this book! by Zac (USA)

1 Stars
January 23, 2006
I thought a while before I started to write this review about how many points I should give. Does it realy deserve zero points? In my opinion, yes! (the rating system does not allow zero points) I bought this very expensive book, written by five authors, and had so far no fun reading it nor does it provide valuable insights about currently the hot topic in biology. Let me just give some examples to make my point clear. First, not all chapters are written equal good/bad but differ. This implies that the five authors separated the chapters under each other. Chapter 4, "Experimental Techniques in a Nutshell" represents probably the negative highlight of the book. The author who has wirtten this chapter refuses persistenly to come to the point. I have to admit that it is almost impossible to explain mass spectromety, RNAi or DNA chips comprehensible if one has only one page for each of these topis. But is this not clear beforehand? This is a general problem of the book. It covers a huge list of differnt topics but the explanations of each topic is only shallow. Further examples for this: Baysian Networks, one page. Multiple linear regression, one page. Cell Cycle, one page. Ok, now we found a general law according to this the book was written. Compile a list of buzz words, order them in a meaningful way, and wirte one page to each of those terms. Finally, lets call it "Systems Biolog" and we are done. I don't think so, that's not it! The only people this book could be useful for are undergraduate students who know nothing at all about this subject and want to get an overview about the topics collected under the phrase systems biology. But even for this reason one can not really recommend this book because it is far too expensive. A final remark. It is clear, that books above the 100$ threshold deserve to be evaluated stronger because it hurts too buy them. If this book would cost 20$ I would give one point.

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits (Chapman & Hall/Crc Mathematical and Computational Biology) by Uri Alon (Author) 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...
	System Modeling in Cellular Biology: From Concepts to Nuts and Bolts by Zoltan Szallasi (Editor), JÃ¶rg Stelling (Editor), Vipul Periwal (Editor) Research in systems biology requires the collaboration of researchers from diverse backgrounds, including biology, computer science, mathematics, statistics, physics, and biochemistry. These collaborations, necessary because of the enormous breadth of background needed for research in this field, can be hindered by differing understandings of the limitations and applicability of techniques and concerns from different disciplines. This comprehensive introduction and overview of system modeling...
	Introduction to Systems Biology by Sangdun Choi (Editor) "Introduction to Systems Biology" is an introductory text for undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in comprehensive biological systems. The authors provide a broad overview of the field using key examples and typical approaches to experimental design. The volume begins with an introduction to systems biology and then details experimental omics tools. Other sections introduce the reader to challenging computational approaches to help understand biological dynamic systems. The...
	Systems Biology: Properties of Reconstructed Networks by Bernhard O. Palsson (Author) Genome sequences are now available that enable us to determine the biological components that make up a cell or an organism. The new discipline of systems biology examines how these components interact and form networks, and how the networks generate whole cell functions corresponding to observable phenotypes. This textbook describes how to model networks, determine their properties, and relate these to phenotypic functions. Some knowledge of linear algebra and biochemistry is required, since...
	Stochastic Modelling for Systems Biology (Mathematical and Computational Biology) by Darren J. Wilkinson (Author) Although stochastic kinetic models are increasingly accepted as the best way to represent and simulate genetic and biochemical networks, most researchers in the field have limited knowledge of stochastic process theory. The stochastic processes formalism provides a beautiful, elegant, and coherent foundation for chemical kinetics and there is a wealth of associated theory every bit as powerful and elegant as that for conventional continuous deterministic models. The time is right for an...