1st Edition
Systems Medicine Physiological Circuits and the Dynamics of Disease
Why do we get certain diseases, whereas other diseases do not exist?
In this book, Alon, one of the founders of systems biology, builds a foundation for systems medicine.
Starting from basic laws, the book derives why physiological circuits are built the way they are. The circuits have fragilities that explain specific diseases and offer new strategies to treat them.
By the end, the reader will be able to use simple and powerful mathematical models to describe physiological circuits. The book explores, in three parts, hormone circuits, immune circuits, and aging and age-related disease. It culminates in a periodic table of diseases.
Alon writes in a style accessible to a broad range of readers - undergraduates, graduates, or researchers from computational or biological backgrounds. The level of math is friendly and the math can even be bypassed altogether. For instructors and readers who want to go deeper, the book includes dozens of exercises that have been rigorously tested in the classroom
Introduction. Part I Hormone Circuits. Chapter 1 The Insulin-Glucose Circuit. Chapter 2 Dynamical Compensation, Mutant Resistance, and Type-2 Diabetes. Chapter 2.5 Three Laws of Physiology. Chapter 3 The Stress Hormone Axis as a Two-Gland Oscillator. Chapter 3.5 The Thyroid and Its Discontents. Part II Immune Circuits. Chapter 4 Autoimmune Diseases as a Fragility of Mutant Surveillance. Chapter 5 Inflammation and Fibrosis as a Bistable System. Chapter 6 Basic Facts of Aging. Chapter 7 Aging and Saturated Repair. Chapter 8 Age-Related Diseases. Chapter 9 Periodic Table of Diseases. EPILOGUE: SIMPLICITY IN SYSTEMS MEDICINE. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. INDEX.
Biography
Uri Alon is the Abisch-Frenkel Professor of Systems Biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. https://www.weizmann.ac.il/mcb/UriAlon/homepage
"Systems Medicine is a masterpiece. Written in a conversational style, it invites us to think about health and disease in a profoundly simple new way. From the secrets of aging to the enigma of autoimmune diseases, Uri Alon uses physiological circuits and the principles that underlie them to illuminate how our bodies work, why specific diseases occur, and what strategies might be used to treat them. Whether you're a curious mind, a biology enthusiast, or just someone excited to understand the magnificent orchestra of life, this book has something extraordinary to offer. To my mind, it’s nothing short of revolutionary."
—Steven Strogatz, Cornell University, USA, author of Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos"Uri Alon has once again opened our eyes to a new frontier of quantitative thinking, this time applied to medicine. Systems Medicine is a masterpiece of clear interdisciplinary exposition, suitable for interested students and researchers with minimal mathematical or physiological background. Its inspiring narrative, accompanied by engaging exercises, explains how the recent application of dynamical systems methods to diabetes, stress, ageing, and autoimmune disorders resolves long-standing puzzles in medicine. This book is destined to be as influential as his earlier Systems Biology, along with potentially important impacts on human health."
—Nigel Goldenfeld, University of California San Diego, USA"This unique book will benefit an unusually broad range of students, scientists, and medical professionals. If you have a background in math, physics, or engineering, you will learn key concepts in physiology and medicine presented in the familiar language of dynamical systems. If your background is in biomedical sciences, you will learn how to build and employ powerful mathematical models to unveil hidden patterns behind disease vulnerabilities. Either way, Uri Alon will masterfully guide you to new insights into the underlying logic of physiological systems and their susceptibility to diseases."
—Ruslan Medzhitov, Yale University, USA"This book will be as influential and transformative as Alon’s Systems Biology. Its quantitative approach provides new insight into the mechanisms that underline common diseases. It should be of interest to students and researchers in medicine, biology, and engineering. It will introduce quantitative analysis to medical students, interesting medical problems to engineers, and catalyze a new synthesis of “systems medicine”. Alon is a pioneer and leading expert in systems biology. He is now pioneering a new field with this book."
—Liqun Luo, Stanford University, USA"This book is a paradigm-shifting journey elegantly guiding readers to perceive health and disease through a new lens. By weaving together multiple disciplines, from mathematics to biology and medicine, Alon paints a vivid picture of how our understanding of biological networks and their dynamics can revolutionize medical approaches. Using simple concepts coupled with real-world examples, the book offers a comprehensive exploration of physiological circuits and exemplifies the practical applications of Systems Medicine. With insightful clarity, Alon distills intricate scientific concepts into digestible insights, making this book accessible to both seasoned researchers and curious minds new to the field."
—Galit Lahav, Harvard University, USA“Uri Alon does an excellent job of introducing physiological concepts and mathematical tools in a precise yet friendly manner. The biological examples are relevant, spanning from the dynamic modelling of insulin-glucose to ageing. Together with a captivating and never boring style, they bring to life the complex and fascinating world of Systems Medicine. The exercises at the end of the chapters are an added bonus, allowing the reader to practice and reflect on biological and mathematical problems. Overall, this book is a welcome introduction to the basic principles of Systems Medicine.”
—Edoardo Saccenti, Wageningen University & Research, The NetherlandsPraise for An Introduction to Systems Biology: Design Principles of Biological Circuits
"…a superb, beautifully written and organized work that takes an engineering approach to systems biology. … He does an excellent job of explaining and motivating a useful toolbox of engineering models and methods using network-based controls. … a valuable and non-overlapping addition to a systems-biology curriculum."
—Eric Werner, University of Oxford, Nature, Vol. 446, No. 29, March 2007"I read Uri Alon’s elegant book almost without stopping for breath. He perceives and explains so many simple regularities, so clearly, that the novice reading this book can move on immediately to research literature, armed with a grasp of the many connections between diverse phenomena."
—Philip Nelson, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA"… Beyond simply recounting recent results, Alon boldly articulates the basic principles underlying biological circuitry at different levels and shows how powerful they can be in understanding the complexity of living cells. For anyone who wants to understand how a living cell works, but thought they never would, this book is essential."
—Michael B. Elowitz, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA"Uri Alon offers a highly original perspective on systems biology, emphasizing the function of certain simple networks that appear as ubiquitous building blocks of living matter. …"
—Boris Shraiman, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA"Systems biology is based on the idea that engineered and evolved systems share common principles. Here, Alon (Weizmann Inst. of Science, Rehovot) elucidates three of the major principles... This book is a compendium of many different experiments. Together, they show that biological systems do obey these design principles."
—P. Cull, Oregon State University, CHOICE connect (57:5, Jan 2020)"A very good book. Very well written, everything is clearly illustrated and presented. It makes a tough subject easy to follow."
—Radu Angelescu, Senior Programmer at Ubisoft"Alon’s book is the ideal counterargument to the idea that organisms are inherently human-opaque: it directly demonstrates the human-understandable structures which comprise real biological systems."
—LessWrong.com
