Mathematical Concepts and Methods in Modern Biology: Using Modern Discrete Models

Mathematical Concepts and Methods in Modern Biology offers a quantitative framework for analyzing, predicting, and modulating the behavior of complex biological systems. The book presents important mathematical concepts, methods and tools in the context of essential questions raised in modern biology.

Designed around the principles of project-based learning and problem-solving, the book considers biological topics such as neuronal networks, plant population growth, metabolic pathways, and phylogenetic tree reconstruction. The mathematical modeling tools brought to bear on these topics include Boolean and ordinary differential equations, projection matrices, agent-based modeling and several algebraic approaches. Heavy computation in some of the examples is eased by the use of freely available open-source software.

• Features self-contained chapters with real biological research examples using freely available computational tools
• Spans several mathematical techniques at basic to advanced levels
• Offers broad perspective on the uses of algebraic geometry/polynomial algebra in molecular systems biology

Raina Robeva was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Virginia and is a Professor of Mathematics and a Karl E. Peace Fellow in Mathematics at Randolph-Macon College in the United States. Her current research is in the broad fields of mathematical and systems biology. In addition to editing this second edition, she has authored and edited several books, including A Bridge to Higher Mathematics (CRC Press, 2024), Algebraic and Combinatorial Computational Biology (Academic Press, 2019), and Algebraic and Discrete Mathematical Methods for Modern Biology (Academic Press, 2015). She has chaired the Advisory Board of the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS), led the Committee on Special Interest Groups of the Mathematical Association of America, and served for over a decade as the founding Editor-in-Chief of Frontiers in Systems Biology.