Chemical Biophysics

Daniel A. Beard is Associate Professor in the Department of Physiology, Biotechnology and Bioengineering Center, Medical College of Wisconsin. He researches nonequilibrium thermodynamics in biochemical networks. Hong Qian is Professor of Applied Mathematics in the University of Washington. His research interests span computational systems biology, molecular biophysics and mathematical biology and include stochastic analysis and statistical physics of biological systems.

• Preface; Introduction; Part I. Background Material: 1. Concepts from physical chemistry; 2. Conventions and calculations for biochemical systems; 3. Chemical kinetics and transport processes; Part II. Analysis and Modeling of Biochemical Systems: 4. Enzyme-catalyzed reactions; 5. Biochemical signaling modules; 6. Biochemical reaction networks; 7. Coupled biochemical systems and membrane transport; Part III. Special Topics: 8. Spatially distributed systems and reaction-diffusion modeling; 9. Constraint-based analysis of biochemical systems; 10. Biomacromolecular structure and molecular association; 11. Stochastic biochemical systems and the chemical master equation; 12. Appendix: the statistical basis of thermodynamics; Bibliography; Index.

Review of the hardback: 'There are a growing number of physicists, engineers, mathematicians and chemists who are interested in joining the post-genomics party and addressing cutting-edge problems in molecular and cell biology. The barrier to entry can be high and prohibitive. This marvelous new book opens the door for the quantitively inclined. Beard and Qian, in an accessible and clear style, present fundamental methods that can be used to model and analyze an array of biomolecular systems and processes, ranging from enzyme kinetics to gene regulatory networks to cellular transport. This book will appeal to autodidacts as well as professors looking for course texts.' J. J. Collins, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and MacArthur Fellow, Boston University