​ This volume brings together a unique collection of protocols that cover standard, novel, and specialized techniques. Cell Cycle Oscillators: Methods and Protocols guides readers through recent progress in the field from both holistic and reductionist perspectives, providing the latest developments in molecular biology techniques, biochemistry, and computational analysis used for studying oscillatory networks. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and cutting-edge, Cell Cycle Oscillators: Methods and Protocols will serve as an invaluable reference to gain further insight into the complex and incompletely understood processes that are involved in the cell cycle and its regulation by oscillatory networks.

With the invitation to edit this volume, I wanted to take the opportunity to assemble reviews on different aspects of circadian clocks and rhythms. Although most c- tributions in this volume focus on mammalian circadian clocks, the historical int- duction and comparative clocks section illustrate the importance of various other organisms in deciphering the mechanisms and principles of circadian biology. Circadian rhythms have been studied for centuries, but only recently, a mole- lar understanding of this process has emerged. This has taken research on circadian clocks from mystic phenomenology to a mechanistic level; chains of molecular events can describe phenomena with remarkable accuracy. Nevertheless, current models of the functioning of circadian clocks are still rudimentary. This is not due to the faultiness of discovered mechanisms, but due to the lack of undiscovered processes involved in contributing to circadian rhythmicity. We know for example, that the general circadian mechanism is not regulated equally in all tissues of m- mals. Hence, a lot still needs to be discovered to get a full understanding of cir- dian rhythms at the systems level. In this respect, technology has advanced at high speed in the last years and provided us with data illustrating the sheer complexity of regulation of physiological processes in organisms. To handle this information, computer aided integration of the results is of utmost importance in order to d- cover novel concepts that ultimately need to be tested experimentally.

The Cell Cycle: Principles of Control provides an engaging insight into the process of cell division, bringing to the student a much-needed synthesis of a subject entering a period of unprecedented growth as an understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying cell division are revealed.

An introduction to the mathematical, computational, and analytical techniques used for modeling biological rhythms, presenting tools from many disciplines and example applications. All areas of biology and medicine contain rhythms, and these behaviors are best understood through mathematical tools and techniques. This book offers a survey of mathematical, computational, and analytical techniques used for modeling biological rhythms, gathering these methods for the first time in one volume. Drawing on material from such disciplines as mathematical biology, nonlinear dynamics, physics, statistics, and engineering, it presents practical advice and techniques for studying biological rhythms, with a common language. The chapters proceed with increasing mathematical abstraction. Part I, on models, highlights the implicit assumptions and common pitfalls of modeling, and is accessible to readers with basic knowledge of differential equations and linear algebra. Part II, on behaviors, focuses on simpler models, describing common properties of biological rhythms that range from the firing properties of squid giant axon to human circadian rhythms. Part III, on mathematical techniques, guides readers who have specific models or goals in mind. Sections on “frontiers” present the latest research; “theory” sections present interesting mathematical results using more accessible approaches than can be found elsewhere. Each chapter offers exercises. Commented MATLAB code is provided to help readers get practical experience. The book, by an expert in the field, can be used as a textbook for undergraduate courses in mathematical biology or graduate courses in modeling biological rhythms and as a reference for researchers.

This book addresses the molecular bases of some of the most important biochemical rhythms known at the cellular level. The approach rests on the analysis of theoretical models closely related to experimental observations. Among the main rhythms considered are glycolytic oscillations observed in yeast and muscle, oscillations of cyclic AMP in Dictyostelium amoebae, intracellular calcium oscillation observed in a variety of cell types, the mitotic oscillator that drives the cell division cycle in eukaryotes, pulsatile hormone signaling, and circadian rhythms in Drosophila. This book will be of interest to life scientists such as biochemists, cell biologists, chronobiologists, medical scientists and pharmacologists. In addition, it will appeal to scientists studying nonlinear phenomena, including oscillations and chaos, in chemistry, physics, mathematics and theoretical biology.

This textbook provides an introduction to dynamic modeling in molecular cell biology, taking a computational and intuitive approach. Detailed illustrations, examples, and exercises are included throughout the text. Appendices containing mathematical and computational techniques are provided as a reference tool.

As 1 review these pages, the last of them written in Summer 1978, some retrospec tive thoughts come to mind which put the whole business into better perspective for me and might aid the prospective reader in choosing how to approach this volume. The most conspicuous thought in my mind at present is the diversity of wholly independent explorations that came upon phase singularities, in one guise or another, during the past decade. My efforts to gather the published literature during the last phases of actually writing a whole book about them were almost equally divided between libraries of Biology, Chemistry, Engineering, Mathematics, Medicine, and Physics. A lot of what 1 call "gathering " was done somewhat in anticipation in the form of cönjecture, query, and prediction based on analogy between developments in different fields. The consequence throughout 1979 was that our long-suffering publisher re peatedly had to replace such material by citation of unexpected flurries of papers giving substantive demonstration. 1 trust that the authors of these many excellent reports, and especially of those I only found too late, will forgive the brevity of allusion I feIt compelled to observe in these substitutions. A residue of loose ends is largely collected in the index under "QUERIES. " It is c1ear to me already that the materials I began to gather several years ago represented only the first flickering of what turns out to be a substantial conflagration.