Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về sinh học được đăng trên tạp chí sinh học Journal of Biology đề tài: The importance of mathematics in biology is a matter of perennial debate. | Journal of Biology BioMed Central Editorial Biologists who count Miranda Robertson The importance of mathematics in biology is a matter of perennial debate. The squabbles of early 20th century geneticists on the value of mathematics to the study of evolution have recently been revisited in Journal of Biology 1 and the 21st century has seen an explosion of information from various -omics and imaging techniques that has provided fresh impetus to the arguments urging the need for mathematical competence in the life sciences 2 . While there can be no question about the contribution of mathematics to many fields in biology there is a curious tendency on the part of numerate biologists often immigrants from the physical sciences to insist that it is an essential part of the equipment of a biologist and none should be without it. This seems on the evidence extreme. A more temperate view is taken if implicitly by Ferrell 3 in his recent Q A for Journal of Biology on systems biology. Explicitly at least in the context of systems biology he is uncompromising on the math prerequisite. . Leaving aside the issue of exactly how you define systems biology one of the objectives of those who would say they are practitioners is to understand the emergent properties of complex systems. Examples of such properties in biological systems are the biochemical switches and oscillators that underlie the cell cycle and the robustness of biological mechanisms -for example the morphogenetic gradients that direct early embryonic development - in conditions that are subject to stochastic fluctuation. Ferrell argues that mathematics is required to understand the behavior of an entire system but acknowledges the value of understanding at a more parochial level the mechanism of parts of it. He gives as a classic example of a switch in biology the gene-regulatory switch 4 that operates the decision between lysis and lysogeny in bacteriophage lambda. Lambda which infects E. coli inserts its genome .
