This advanced textbook is tailored for an introductory course in Systems Biology and is well-suited for biologists as well as engineers and computer scientists. It comes with student-friendly reading lists and a companion website featuring a short exam prep version of the book and educational modeling programs. The text is written in an easily accessible style and includes numerous worked examples and study questions in each chapter. For this edition, a section on medical systems biology has been included.

This book is geared to every student in biology, pharmacy and medicine who needs to become familiar with receptor mediated signaling. The text starts with explaining some basics in membrane biochemistry, hormone biology and the concept of receptor based signaling as the main form of communication between cells and of cells with the environment. It goes on covering each receptor superfamily in detail including their structure and evolutionary context.

This book offers radical ways to help us raid the treasure trove of knowledge from nature. It is a book to be read slowly, one verse at a time for digestion and assimilation; it is a book to be read quickly, from the beginning to the end for holding you spellbound and finding the joy of being. Nature has important lessons to teach us from every insect, tree, and rock. Nature can show us the way—the way out of the many problems and predicaments that we face. Nature has inspired modern communities and even whole nations in the quests for the ultimate good life.

Rachel Carson’s eloquent book Silent Spring stands as one of the most important books of the twentieth century and inspired important and long-lasting changes in environmental science and government policy. Frederick Rowe Davis thoughtfully sets Carson’s study in the context of the twentieth century, reconsiders her achievement, and analyzes its legacy in light of toxic chemical use and regulation today.

Archiving corn strains to guard against genetic pollution … Coating chainsaw blades with mushroom spores to speed forest regeneration … Growing crops that literally suck heavy metals out of damaged soil … These are not utopian fantasies but proven strategies developed by experts who have discovered how to exploit the innate intelligence of living systems to create “true biotechnologies.”