Biological systems modeling of metabolic and signaling networks

Cells interact with the world around them, as well as monitor their own intracellular state, using powerful biochemical processing systems. The output of these systems drive complex phenotypic programs which encode cellular operations in response to changes in extracellular or intracellular states. Mathematical modeling plays an integral part in understanding the properties of these systems and is an invaluable tool for bioengineering applications. In this review, we discuss recent contributions in the field of biological systems modeling. We describe model construction and identification techniques along with computational tools to characterize cellular operation. We focus on two commonly studied and important subsystems, namely, prokaryotic carbon metabolism and eukaryotic signal transduction systems.