wallace@fmi.ch (05/31/88)
From: Andrew Wallace <wallace%fmi.ch@RELAY.CS.NET> Dear Colleagues, I am forwarding this message to the bulletin boards so that others may also read it. Regards, Andrew Wallace, FMI, Basel, Switzerland. ================== Date: 30 May 88 12:47 +0100 From: sachs%math.Berkeley.EDU@cartan.berkeley.edu To: wallace@fmi.ch In-Reply-To: <6456@ig.ig.com> Message-ID: <8805281634.AA07227@jif> Subject: Re: Request for information Return-Receipt-To: sachs%math.Berkeley.EDU@cartan.berkeley.edu >Newsgroups: bionet.general >Organization: Math Dept., UC Berkeley I am a mathematical physicist who has recently become interested in biology and is trying to assemble some background on modeling of metabolic (particularly cellular bioenergetic) processes. Thus I am not an expert at all, but have spent quite a bit of time trying to orient myself. There is stuff along the lines previously explored by operations research theory people and electrical engineers ("control theory", "systems analysis", "sensitivity analysis"...); stuff along the lines of qualitative theory of differential equations (attractors, oscilations, bifurcations, chaos); a little stuff based on non-equilibrium thermodynamics, tho not much of this seems to be computer work; and enormous amounts of biological stuff on particular biochemical reactions, in the cell and outside, with comments on the rates, concentrations, mechanisms, empirical methods of determination, models, etc., mostly quite qualitative. One reference to the first two subjects that looks fairly comprehensive to me ( I haven't read it, just got it out recently) is: DYNAMICS OF BIOCHEMICAL SYSTEMS Symposia Biologica Hungarica Elsevier Science Publishers Amsterdam, 1986 Damjanovitch, Keleti & Tron editors As a mathematician I find some of the work of Othmer (University of Utah Dept. of Math) fairly accesible, e.g. Nonlinear Oscillations in Chemistry and Biology (Springer-Verlag, 1985 or 1986). He is leading a Gordon Conference this summer and that book should be more up-to-date. If you are interested please write for lmore info when: (a) I am at school, where my references are, rather than at lhome where I happended to get lyour note; (b) I lhave a bit more time; (c) I can hear a little more specifically what you had in mind.