Chemical Engineering 696/496  – Special Topics: Molecular Systems biology

Instructor: Woolf

TTH 2:30-4:30

F 12:30-2:30 OR F 2:30-4:30

How do hundreds of proteins cooperate to transduce a signal in a cell? How is the expression of tens to thousands of cells mutually regulated? How do regulatory pathways inside the cell keep a cell in a particular phenotype? These are kinds of questions that the emerging field of molecular systems biology attempts to address.

This course will expose students to the following areas:

• Background molecular biology at the systems level
• Machine learning tools such as Bayesian networks, constraint based learning, and Markov Chains
• Stochastic modeling tools such as Gillespie integration and stochastic differential equations
• Deterministic tools such as ordinary differential equations and Boolean networks.
• Experimental approaches used in systems biology

The course is a mixture of lectures, hands on wet lab experience, and computing lab experience. The goal is to provide students with a powerful set of computational tools in systems biology while providing a deeper understanding of the experimental issues involved in doing this kind of research.

This course is intended for engineers and scientists interested in systems biology. Previous knowledge of biology and programming will be helpful but is not required.