Life: An Introduction to Complex Systems Biology

✍ Scribed by Professor Dr. Kunihiko Kaneko (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 376
• Series: Understanding Complex Systems
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

What is life? Has molecular biology given us a satisfactory answer to this question? And if not, why, and how to carry on from there? This book examines life not from the reductionist point of view, but rather asks the question: what are the universal properties of living systems and how can one construct from there a phenomenological theory of life that leads naturally to complex processes such as reproductive cellular systems, evolution and differentiation? The presentation has been deliberately kept fairly non-technical so as to address a broad spectrum of students and researchers from the natural sciences and informatics.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages I-XIV
How Should Living Systems Be Studied?....Pages 1-36
Constructive Biology....Pages 37-46
Basic Concepts in Dynamical Systems and Statistical Physics for Biological System....Pages 47-79
Origin of Bioinformation....Pages 81-109
Origin of a Cell with Recursive Growth....Pages 111-133
Universal Statistics of a Cell with Recursive Growth....Pages 135-157
Cell Differentiation and Development....Pages 159-192
Irreversible Differentiation from Stem Cell and Robust Development....Pages 193-225
Pattern Formation and Origin of Positional Information....Pages 227-254
Genetic Evolution with Phenotypic Fluctuations....Pages 255-279
Speciation as a Fixation of Phenotypic Differentiation....Pages 281-314
Conclusion....Pages 315-347
Back Matter....Pages 349-371

✦ Subjects

Biophysics/Biomedical Physics;Complexity;Artificial Intelligence (incl. Robotics);Applications of Mathematics