Mathematical Concepts and Methods in Modern 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.

"Contributors in biology, in mathematics, and in bioinformatics introduce undergraduate students and their instructors to more applications of discrete mathematics to biology than can be found in standard textbooks. The goal is not to be comprehensive, but to open the door to more advanced and specialized resources." --Reference and Research Book News, August 2013

• Preface by Raina Robeva and Terrell Hodge1. Mechanisms for Gene Regulation: A Boolean Network Model of the Lac Operon2. Epigenetic Features of the Lac Operon: Comparing Boolean and Ordinary Differential Equations Models3. Inferring the Topology of Gene Regulatory Networks: An Algebraic Approach to Reverse Engineering4. Global Dynamics Emerging from Local Interactions: Agent-based Modeling for the Life Sciences5. Agent-based Models and Optimal Control in Biology: An Algebraic Approach6. Neuronal Networks: A Discrete Model7. Predicting Plant Population Growth: Modeling with Projection Matrices8. Metabolic Pathways Analysis: A Linear Algebraic Approach9. Identifying CpG Islands: Sliding Windows and Hidden Markov Models10. Codon Usage: From Elementary Probability to Algebraic Geometry11. Phylogenetic Tree Reconstruction: Geometric Approaches