Automatic Control in Systems Biology

Abstract

Reductionist approaches toward molecular and cellular biology have greatly advanced our understanding of biological function and information processing. To better map molecular components to systems-level understanding and emergent function, the relatively new field of systems biology was established. Systems biology enables the analysis of complex functions in networked biological systems using integrative (rather than reductionist) approaches, leveraging many principles, tools, and best practices common to control theory. Systems biology requires effective collaboration between experimental, theoretical, and computational scientists/engineers to effectively execute the tightly iterative design-build-test cycle that is critical to the understanding, development, and control of biological models. This chapter summarizes new developments of automatic control in systems biology, providing illustrative examples as well as theoretical background for select case studies.