Biological Cybernetics: Information Processing in Living Systems
Living systems can be regarded as information processing machines.
They react to external and internal signals and modify their behaviour
accordingly in order to survive in a changing environment. Signal
processing occurs at every organisational level, but we will focus on
the molecular mechanisms of biological self-regulation.
What will you learn?
Specific skills
You will learn how to model biological regulatory processes.
You will be able to create and test biochemical kinetic models
describing genomic and metabolic regulatory circuits. Furthermore,
you will learn how to simulate natural selection and the interaction
of species during evolution.
General knowledge
You will develop a deep understanding of how scientific research works.
You will understand the process of creating hypotheses
that can be tested experimentally or by computer simulations.
You will be able to contribute your knowledge
to any scientific research project by asking the "right questions"
and answering them using mathematical and computational tools.