Systems Medicine

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Systems Medicine introduces the topic of physiological circuits, in which cells and organs communicate. It is written in a very accessible style, suitable for anyone with a background in biology, engineering, physics, math, engineering, computer science, chemistry or other subjects.

Why do we get certain diseases, whereas other diseases do not exist?

In this book, Alon, one of the founders of systems biology, builds a foundation for systems medicine.

Starting from basic laws, the book derives why physiological circuits are built the way they are. The circuits have fragilities that explain specific diseases and offer new strategies to treat them.

By the end, the reader will be able to use simple and powerful mathematical models to describe physiological circuits. The book explores, in three parts, hormone circuits, immune circuits, and aging and age-related disease. It culminates in a periodic table of diseases.

Alon writes in a style accessible to a broad range of readers - undergraduates, graduates, or researchers from computational or biological backgrounds. The level of math is friendly and the math can even be bypassed altogether. For instructors and readers who want to go deeper, the book includes dozens of exercises that have been rigorously tested in the classroom

Obsah

Introduction. Part I Hormone Circuits. Chapter 1 The Insulin-Glucose Circuit. Chapter 2 Dynamical Compensation, Mutant Resistance, and Type-2 Diabetes. Chapter 2.5 Three Laws of Physiology. Chapter 3 The Stress Hormone Axis as a Two-Gland Oscillator. Chapter 3.5 The Thyroid and Its Discontents. Part II Immune Circuits. Chapter 4 Autoimmune Diseases as a Fragility of Mutant Surveillance. Chapter 5 Inflammation and Fibrosis as a Bistable System. Chapter 6 Basic Facts of Aging. Chapter 7 Aging and Saturated Repair. Chapter 8 Age-Related Diseases. Chapter 9 Periodic Table of Diseases. EPILOGUE: SIMPLICITY IN SYSTEMS MEDICINE. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. INDEX.